


Penumbra

by metaphlame



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-03-31 01:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 52,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3958711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphlame/pseuds/metaphlame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Kirkwall, Anders walked free. Fenris did not approve and wants answers. His hunt takes him to a gathering at a temple near a little town called Haven...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Snow._ He still hadn't quite gotten the hang of the stuff. It spiraled down from above with its silent promise of damp collars and frozen knuckles, undisturbed by the faintest breath of wind in this sheltered hollow where Fenris huddled, buried deep in a fur cloak the color the flakes coming from the sky. Snow. Bah.

He hadn't lit a fire. Hadn't dared to; not with the freezing landscape crawling with mages and templars alike. He had made the concession to boots, it was true, for all that the hardened soles of his feet felt deafened, locked away from the earth beneath. But these frigid southern climes were too cold for his usual garb. Too cold, he would have thought, for anyone to want to come down here at all.

The swarms of clanking guardsmen and shifty-eyed mages spoke volumes to the contrary, however. Fenris had already avoided two patrols en route to the much-publicized summit that morning; when the snow started he hoped it meant he might have a moment's pause to get his bearings. He only hoped his quarry was taking the same opportunity.

And if he told them? What then? Fenris stared into the bleak mountains enfolding him like a blanket without warmth; imagined charging through the drifts to any one of the banner-bedecked commanders--the templars? the Seekers? The obedient, pro-Circle mages, even?--and warning them that the murderer of Kirkwall might be lurking in their midst.

At which point, of course, their faces would turn inward, the brows tilt down in disapproval or up in sarcastic feigned belief. For he had no proof, it was true. "This is the sort of thing he might go to," would carry little weight with anyone--as well it shouldn't, Fenris thought. Nor would "I just have a feeling he's here somewhere" serve as much of a warning to those thousands pouring toward the tiny mountain town of Haven and, beyond it, to the temple in its snowbound refuge. They had bigger things to worry about, they thought. Yes, the explosion at Kirkwall touched all this off, and yes, what happened there had been awful--but that was then, they would say. Like the blind fools they were. That was then, and this was now, and moreover it was a chance to fix things--a chance that couldn't afford to be squandered over the hunches of a no-name elf with strange markings on his flesh and the same Kirkwall stories that had been on everyone else's lips two years ago.

"Idiots," Fenris growled to himself, in the dark depths of his cloak. He knew quite well the mental infrastructure behind their optimism, and to him it was as though they were trusting a boat made of rushes to carry them across the Amaranthine Ocean. Boats with sails of hope so bright it would light the whole ship afire before it ever left sight of land. Drowning or flames--pick your poison. "You could tell them the world was about to end, and they'd fault you for spoiling their dinner," he spat.

"Well it would sour the taste of the wine, you have to admit."

Fenris was on his feet in an instant, sword drawn, eyes crawling about the shadowed clearing seeking the owner of that droll voice. Ah. Around the edge of a boulder, drawn up against it like ivy to a building. Thin and lithe, slim build. Elf. Dalish? No face markings, but he'd never asked Merrill if _all_ Dalish had face markings. He had a staff, though--could be a mage. Fenris's eyes narrowed.

"Do you make a habit of creeping about like that?" His voice grated in his own ears. Hoarse from disuse, these long months of lonesome hunting.

"Do you make a habit of talking to yourself?" At Fenris's flat stare, the elf stepped away from the boulder into plain view, his head seeming to glow palely in the stormlight filtering down through the snowflakes. Head uncovered, clad only in homespun, he seemed completely untroubled by the cold--which only hardened Fenris's suspicions that there was something magical about this man, and therefore dangerous.

"What strange markings you bear. Where did you acquire them?"

"Painfully." Fenris had not lowered his sword, though the elf took a few inquisitive steps toward him, peering openly at the white lines winding around his neck and arms.

"Oh, I expect so. Lyrium, is it then? Fascinating."

Fenris felt the tendons in his jaw twang, every muscle in the arms that held the sword thrumming _mage, mage mage!_ Still, best to extract information first; best not to squander this opportunity to--

"Whoever you're hunting, I doubt I have anything to do with them," the bald elf said simply. "I am called Solas." He inclined his head.

"I don't particularly care what you're called, apostate."

"Then why trouble to speak with me? Why not simply cleave me in two with your weapon?" When Fenris hesitated, Solas allowed himself a small twitch of the lips that would have to count for a smile. "You see? You wish information of me. As it turns out, I too am seeking information, so perhaps we can be of use to one another."

"I find that unlikely."

"Such a chronic lack of imagination." Solas tilted his head a moment, squinting, and Fenris had the distinct feeling of being peeled open like an orange, his thoughts spiraling into rinds around his feet, ripe for the reading. _"Garas quenathra, ghilan'him banal'vhen?"_

Fenris glared. "I am no Dalish elf, mage."

"That makes two of us, then."

"Are you with a Circle?"

Solas ignored this question, stepping carelessly past the sword bared at him to gain a better vantage point down the length of the hollow in which they stood. "This place will fill with snow soon. The wind doesn't reach, here. Passage without leaving a trail will become impossible."

"That's not my concern."

"Clearly. You are the predator, and not the prey." Solas turned back to look at him then, face unreadable and wreathed by snowflakes. "But consider the dilemma from your quarry's point-of-view. Whoever they are, they are likely to seek shelter rather than to leave so obvious a trail through this snow. You might want to consider that before you assume every second man with a staff is mage on the rampage, out for blood."

"If you had seen what I have, you would fear a mage out for blood as much as I do."

That ghost of a smile again. "You are free to maintain that belief, if you so choose. I doubt I will have the time to sway you from it."

"Oh? Leaving so soon?"

"I told you I needed information. Once I have it, I will be off." 

"To the summit?"

"I expect so."

Fenris's eyes darted from the elf's staff to his lightweight clothing--and his seeming inability to feel the cold. "What could one such as yourself possibly desire from me?"

"Are there any patrols about?"

Fenris snorted. "Templars, I assume you mean."

"Templars or mages, either one."

"You really need me to tell you that?"

Solas sighed. "I am asking you to, yes."

"What makes you think I wouldn't just send you straight into a templar trap?"

"They don't have time to form traps. They are as invested in reaching their destination as am I. I, however, wish to arrive alone. A desire with which I am sure you are familiar." Solas quirked an eyebrow.

_Mage,_ Fenris's mind howled at him. And he listened. He had no idea whether the strange mage would trust him or not, but he was not going to send him away into the open countryside. "Just over the ridge, yes," Fenris growled, carefully ladelling his voice with as much dislike and distrust as he'd voiced earlier. Not a hair's difference, and the mage none the wiser to whether he was telling the truth or not. "Templars. I took shelter here to avoid them. They'll be moving on in this storm, though--I expect they're gone by now." 

Solas inclined his bald head with respect. "I thank you for the information. May I ask what you would like in return?"

Fenris hesitated. Why should he trust this man? He didn't. And yet, if the opportunity was presenting itself, he might as well take advantage.

"I seek a mage. A human, likely traveling alone. Blonde hair, Ferelden. Have you seen him?"

"Not _quite_ alone, is he?"

The flatness of the statement, with the barest hint of a rise at the end to intimate the question, told Fenris all he needed to know. Yes, this elf had seen Anders and yes, he had known--through means Fenris had no time to fathom--about his possession; about Vengeance. With a yell, he leapt forward at the bald elf, blade raised--

\--only to find himself, what felt like mere moments later, sprawled in the snow, blade lying by his side under a thick crust of snowflakes that grew thicker by the minute. Numb fingers scrabbled for its hilt and he hauled himself to his feet, head spinning, only to find no sign of the elf Solas. Any footprints he might have left were long gone by now, and the snow-shod hollow was as deathly still as it had been when Fenris entered--how long ago had it been? How long had he lain here? Frantically he ran his hands over his body, seeking a wound that might explain his lapse in consciousness. He was untouched. Cold, stiff, but untouched, and utterly alone in the snow.

Glowering, he swung his sword back over his shoulder and began a slow, steady plod out of the hollow. One foot after another. There was a mage to find--possibly two. And he would brook no delay.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotes are from the Canticle of Andraste and Transfigurations, as rendered in World of Thedas vol. 2.

_An ocean of sorrow does nobody drown. An ocean of sorrow does nobody drown._ Fire flared to light in Anders' fingers as he blasted a path through the snow before him, stumbling as snowflakes showered into his eyes. Which themselves were not dry to begin with.

_An ocean of sorrow does--_ He cut himself off with a yelp as an overhanging pine branch, warmed by the light of his self-kindled fire, unburdened itself of a wagon-sized load of snow with a _fwump,_ burying the ground where he had just been standing in a good four feet of snow. Left, right, his eyes darted like sandcrabs across the snowy landscape, seeking pursuers-- _REDEMPTION? MARTYRDOM? SUCH A WASTE!_ snickered the part of his mind that he did not, dared not spare time or thought for, lest he go down the same road whose darker turns woke him from his last exhausted semi-sleep, sweating and yelling about the eyes, the eyes, staring at him, dead and staring and accusing and _knowing_ him for what he was, even if he did not remember slaying them; stilling them in their sockets.

_Foul and corrupt are they who would have taken His gift and turned it against his children. They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones. They shall find no rest in this world or beyond--_

"Shut up!" bellowed Anders--just Anders; he had to check; it _was_ just Anders, wasn't it?--wishing the words back in his mouth immediately. Wishing a great deal back in his power, under his control again, immediately. But the land he stared into--wind-tossed, snow-laden, a jumble of trees and earth under thick layers of white that continued down from the sky in torrents--was still and silent. Silent, save for the wind and that strange sort of velvety impact that was snow falling on snow, multiplied a thousand thousand thousand times. 

_You're cracking, Anders,_ he told himself--only himself. But he heard Vengeance snicker, using his own lips and throat and tongue, and it made him want to tear it all out; to be done with voicing any words that weren't his own. _They shall find no rest in this world..._

He had had no rest for days. Days, weeks, months? He could no longer tell. He had lost all track of time since Kirkwall, letting his feet tumble him through forests swamps he did not see; letting his hands bring food he did not taste to his mouth. He smelled. He knew that much, because the mages he'd overheard talking about this summit had remarked on it. He'd run then--crashing through the brush, tripping and rolling end-over-end down most of a hillside--hoping Vengeance had been sleeping; that he hadn't heard or seen or thought to act on the information.

But of course, he had. There was no sleeping with Vengeance--he was simply speaking or not; laughing with that cruel laugh (stealing Anders' lips to do so) or not. There was no rest for the wicked. 

And so they had come, across sea and plain and mountain, to this hardscrabble town on the edge of the world, or more precisely _near_ the town. Anders had been able to convince Vengeance of the necessity of staying hidden, at least. No more trading posts; no more huddling near an inn's fire with fellow sodden travelers, shoveling gruel and a bit of gossip into their mouths of a misbegotten evening. At least those travelers were safe.

_THERE IS NO HIDING FROM JUSTICE._

Anders did not know if he had spoken aloud, or if that voice like a dirge's bells hand rung only in his head this time. He could no longer tell. It had seemed so easy, once. Such a simple matter, to explain to Hawke, to Merrill, to Fenris, to anyone-- _this is where I end. This is where he begins._ Even when things started to...become more difficult, even then he could say, "I worry we are becoming one." When he said _I_ there was still a separate being that was voicing that _I_. But now, though...

He heard Vengeance's laughter, in his head this time, and shuddered. The shudder turned into a shiver, which sank into his bones and shook him, reminding him of the snow pattering against his face, his hands; down the back of his neck. His hood had slipped off when he started at the fallen snowpile, and had gathered a good handful of snow in its curve as he stood there. This now cascaded around his ears as he yanked the hood back on, and he swore. The wildman's beard that bristled forth from his face like a feral thing--Vengeance knew him too well; hadn't let him shave for fear of what might happen when he held the blade in his hand--failed to make him feel even a smidgeon warmer. 

All this--the cold, the landscape, even the bleary gasping fixation on the past--was distraction, and Anders knew it. He was afraid. Afraid of what would happen when he reached this conclave. Afraid of what Vengeance wanted to happen. He felt the pride of the thing inside him; its certainty. He supposed he should feel grateful that he was at least able to look at that certainty objectively and know that it had once been a thing he shared. But such an observation did him little good.

_THERE IS NO HIDING FROM JUSTICE,_ the thing roared at him again. Anders' throat ached; he knew it had come from his own mouth this time.

"They're not hiding, they're just trying to come to an understanding--" he croaked, but bit himself off. 

_THOSE WHO OPPRESS MAGES UNDERSTAND ONLY DEATH. THEY WILL RECEIVE IT THROUGH ME._

Anders felt the ache pound in his skull and behind his eyes, pushing moisture out that he could ill afford to lose to wind and icy lashes. "Haven't we done enough?"

_IT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH UNTIL EVERY LAST TEMPLAR IS GONE._

Anders sank to his knees as snow skirled about him; the parody of the robes of a king; an archon. He was so tired. He ached in his brain, his bones, his very breath. "That will take more than I have to give," he whispered, his words lost to the storm in an instant.

But Vengeance heard, of course. _THEN I WILL FIND ANOTHER. THERE IS ALWAYS ANOTHER._

"I know," Anders cried, burying his head in his heads. He was still kneeling there when the dart took him in the neck, sending him billowing into sweet, sweet blackness.


	3. Chapter 3

Fenris leaned back against the cave wall, shrugging his shoulders to loosen the muscles there. The damnable mage may have been gaunt as a wraith, but hauling his deadweight through a snowstorm was still not the easiest task he could have set himself. His eyes kept returning warily to his charge as he scanned the cave; they clearly weren't the first individuals to seek shelter here. Others had come by, judging by the scuffmarks that preceded them back into the murky gloom--and recently.

Fenris was in the act of coaxing a bit of kindling into a fire when the mage stirred and groaned thickly. Fenris was on his feet in an instant, blade drawn, positioned so the bleak light from the cave mouth was sure to illuminate him; make his identity plain to the apostate upon waking.

"Unnnngh," mumbled the rake-thin man in soiled robes, whose arrogance--as far as Fenris was concerned--had shattered the known world. "Mah tongue taseths lahk glue." "You should be grateful it's still in your skull," snapped Fenris. "I could have cut it out, you know."

Anders squinted blearily up at him, his eyes dilated too wide, his tongue probing delicately at the dry, cracked lips buried in his beard. It took him a minute to focus, and when he finally recognized the person holding the sword a foot from the tip of his nose, his jaw cracked as it fell open. "Y-ou? Haw did you fahnd me?"

"How do you think? The greatest gathering of templars and mages in recorded history. I correctly surmised it would draw you like a moth to a flame. What, am I wrong?"

Anders' eyes had grown wider and wider as Fenris spoke, and now he struggled to form his words with care. "H-he's...he's not..." With trembling fingers he reached up to the swollen lump on his neck, pink but beginning to purple into a bruise. "What did you do to me?"

The thin-lipped smile on Fenris' face was anything but kind. "A qunari invention. Leaves you capable of talking--for what that's worth--but thoroughly prevents you from casting any spells. Do I take it from your perplexed stare that you were hoping to blast me to bits where I stand?"

Anders' eyes remained open but he appeared to stare inwards, not at anything--not at the rough-hewn cave walls; not at the many booted footprints trailing off into its dark depths; not even at Fenris, limned alternately in the blue light of the storm and the softer orange light of the fire that still smoldered loyally at his feet, where he'd forgotten it in the rush for his sword. 

"He's...inert. Not gone but...drugged." He focused back on Fenris then with a shining joy that made the elf take an involuntary step back. "He's silent! If he knew you were here...if he saw you with that sword...but he doesn't!

"What have you _done?"_

Fenris shifted uncomfortably. "I told you. I darted you with a qunari poison; it impedes magical ability." He regarded the mage disdainfully. 

"Works just as well at quelling demons, it seems. I'll have to remember that."

"But..." Anders trailed off, rubbing his hand over his mouth, his eyes roving over the cave with sudden interest; a renewed kind of vigor. Watching him was like watching a plague victim slated for death come round, shock blossoming into a renewed engagement with the world that put Fenris even more on edge than he already was. "I don't understand," he said at last, looking up at Fenris with no apparent regard for the sword still hovering near his face. "Why not just kill me?"

Fenris' scowl deepened, causing the firelight to flicker menacingly along his lyrium markings. "You seem disappointed, mage."

"No, I..." Anders blinked again, and pulled himself into a sitting position from the frigid stone floor with the aching movements of an old man. "I'm just confused. Finding the poison, going to--to all that trouble. Why bother?"

Still glaring, Fenris held his sword aloft a moment more before slowly, slowly allowing himself to return back to his position leaning against the wall. His white hair caught the warring lights of fire and storm as well as his markings did; he looked ethereal standing there, like a dagger propped against the wall. He regarded Anders with as much scorn as he could summon onto his face before looking out and away, into the tumble of flakes that might--he wasn't sure--have been lessening.

"He wanted me to join him," he said, voice flat. His eyes were distant; they saw Kirkwall's towering Tevinter walls; its misery etched in bronze and affixed permanently to the cliffs that flanked the harbor entrance to the place.

"Who?"

Fenris' voice came down like a whipcrack. "Vael, who else?"

"The...the Starkhaven cleric?"

"Not a cleric. Not yet. Though I doubt there's much difference you could parse between him and a cleric. That doesn't matter."

Anders spoke as though going too loud or fast might shatter something. 

His eyes still flickered with an exultant kind of relief, though, even through his confusion. "But what does this have to do with--"

"Why do you question the good fortune that befalls you?" Fenris demanded, his voice clawing its way from wall to wall like an animal quickly growing tired of its cage."Why would you reject it, this reprieve I am handing you, when every bone in my body desires your death?"

_Death! Death! Death!_ echoed the cave. 

Anders curled into himself under the onslaught but looked up again as soon as it faded to mere echoes. Fenris shot a gaze thick with loathing out onto the blank white pages of the world beyond the cave. "He wanted you to come with him...?" Anders prompted. Tentative, like a moth settling on the point of a sword.

"He said I could train armies. Elves, even. That they'd listen to me. Want to _be_ me."

"That sounds--"

"Shut up." Fenris was done looking into the snowy abyss now; he fixed Anders with eyes like daggers. "I am not that person. I will not stand in front of eager eyes and share what I was taught, what I was made to do, on pain of very real death and other, worse things, as though it were a gift. A _gift!"_ He threw himself off the wall and began to pace now, prowling back and forth, leonine in his grace and the swiftness with which he would use it to kill. "He thinks he can just paste the Maker over every wrong, every injustice and every vile, evil treacherous thing that happens in this world, and call it good. Call it owned, planned, and according to a purpose. One which he is oh so-conveniently-placed to hand down, from on high, straight from the Maker's cold dead lips." 

Anders held himself still and stared. Only stared. Fenris' body all but sung with tension and the need to destroy.

"But I wanted to!" he snarled, whirling back for another length of pacing between the narrow cave walls. "Even knowing him for the charlatan he is, I wanted to, if it meant cleansing the world of people like you." He came to stop in front of Anders, spinning mid-stride to plant both feet before the bent and broken man before him. 

Anders looked up at him, waiting.

"I could have turned you in. I should have. Vael, that rat, said we should draw lots for it. I didn't owe you anything. I could have done it. I might have, if it wasn't giving that cowardly wretch an easy way out of a situation he didn't have the guts to fix himself. You're an _abomination,_ Anders."

Anders winced at the word but that was all. Didn't fight it. "Why didn't you, then?" he asked. "Turn me in?"

Fenris bent down and leaned close, close enough that he could count the pores on Anders' unwashed face. Close enough that the white shocks of his hair swung forward and grazed the mage's ears. 

"Because," Fenris hissed, "I wanted to be the one to kill you myself." His eyes flashed with the fire's reflection. "And I wanted you to be you when I did it--not the demon you hide behind. You did this, you let him in, and you've seen what you've done. You should pay for it while you know what it is you do. What I'm doing to you."

Anders' eyes still shone, but with something else, now. Fenris couldn't tell, amid the shadows and the man's gaunt hollows, and didn't care. The mage opened his mouth to speak—

\--but his words died on his tongue, and his head whipped around to the back of the cave and the darkness there.

"What? What is it? Speak, damn you!" the elf snapped, blade bared.

Anders shook his head slowly. "That can't...something is happening and..." He swallowed. "The conclave. Has it started? Something's gone wrong. Everyone should...leave...there's so much power!"

With a fleet-footedness Fenris never would have thought possible from such a tattered sack of bones and flesh, Anders scooped up a stick from the tiny fire Fenris had started and darted past him. Cursing, Fenris charged after him, sluffing off the great fur cloak that impeded him and loathing the clunky winter boots that weighed him down.

"You'll think you'll escape judgment by hiding in a cave, mage?" he bellowed, his voice smacking angrily off walls and floor and ceiling, clanging like bells heralding the return of a god of wrath. 

Ahead of him, Anders did not answer, but skittered around a corner, his light dim in in his hands as he ran, flickering in and out of sight like a firefly cradled between the fingers. 

Two ladders and a staircase later, Fenris could hear his quarry's hollow gasping hissing down the hallway. "Enough, Anders!" he roared. "This ends here!" 

Suddenly the reek of burnt hair and charred flesh assailed his nostrils, and he felt the power from his markings surge to life in his hands even as they still held his sword. By the eerie blue light coming from them he could make out corpses--or what remained of them, littered about a broad, flat space in what appeared to have become, somewhere during the ascent, a fully-fledged mine and not just a cave. There had been death here, and it might still be waiting.

"Couldn't end it kneeling, begging for mercy I wouldn't give, could you?" 

Fenris sneered into the darkness. "Had to lure me away into the obscurity of a mine, and give yourself over to the demon completely in order to fight me? It won't help. I'll kill you both, one way or another."

The hairs on the back of Fenris' neck rose, and he spun just in time to deflect a fireball flung at him by a festering, howling creature of decaying flesh and rotting robes. _Wraith,_ was all he managed to think before instinct took over, and he became a flurry of leaps and slashes and rolls, blade always seeking those desiccated hands and those bottomless pits where eyes should be. He had no idea if the wraith was Anders, or had been summoned by Anders, and he had no time to consider it. Wherever it came from, it needed to die.

At last, the wraith faltered, and Fenris darted in with his sword, quick as a hummingbird at a long-necked flower. With a bone-rending shriek the wraith spun and dissipated into a shower of foul-smelling dust and rags. Fenris had hardly knelt over the remains to examine then for clues--had this been the mage?--before a thin wail from further back in the cave-turned-mine drew him away from the corpse in a heartbeat. Boots slapping like fish on wet rocks as he ran--how he hated the things!--he skidded around the corner and almost bowled Anders over where the mage stood in a sudden opening out onto a sky that had indeed almost ceased producing snow altogether.

"Foolish trick," Fenris growled, edging around the mage with sword at the ready.

Anders had yet to look at him, though, or to acknowledge the blade hovering inches from his face. All his attention remained riveted out and down, honed in on the Temple of Sacred Ashes on its snowy little hill in the valley. "Something's gone wrong," he whispered, more to himself than to anyone who might be listening. "It's not just the mages, because they aren't fighting each other down below. But in the temple..."

"Fancy it feels new, finally being right about something." Fenris stalked up to the mage and raised his blade. "You're quite right in concluding that something is wrong. If only you knew how much."

Anders blinked, and turned, seeming surprised Fenris was there. "Fenris, you must--" he began, but did not finish. For as he spoke a horrific tearing noise rent the sky, and what was blue became black, and what was mere air and stone and sky became a blazing, sickly green, and at a level that was not heard so much by ears and eardrums as by the painful juddering of chest cavities, an explosion rocked the earth. Fenris felt his ears pop and screech deafeningly in response; saw the bolt of green blasting out of the valley so bright as to make him slam his eyes shut; saw in slow motion, even as he moved to close his eyes, a chunk of debris flying toward him with all the accuracy of a perfectly-aimed throwing knife.

And he saw the blurred form of a man move between him and the green light; felt hands on him; a leg to the soft underside of his kneecap, knocking him down, and down he fell, fell, fell, past the floor and into a blackness so dark even the cave he remembered charging through a minute ago--had it only been a minute ago?--could not compare.


	4. Chapter 4

This--Anders remembered this. The cries of the wounded, the smell of burnt flesh, the shock-dulled way people moved, as the air had turned just gelatinous enough to slow them down. Something was missing, though. He grimaced, hoisting Fenris' limp body over his shoulder as he squinted, trying to figure it out. _Ah._ The crows. There were no dark wings coasting over them in lazy circles, not even vultures. Whatever had happened at that temple had frightened away even the wildlife that feasted on death. For the moment, anyway.

A templar in battered burnished armor that barely managed to reflect the sickly green sky above them anymore limped past, and Anders instinctively ducked his head, cursing himself even as he did so. _Too fast, too suspicious,_ he howled inwardly. He froze for a moment, fiddling with the sharp edge of Fenris' gauntlet that pressed into his cheek, as though trying to adjust it. As though concerned with so earthly a matter, and no with being recognized on the instant as the man who had shattered Kirkwall and arguably started this whole mess--who had brought these people here, to have attracted or caused that great gaping green hole in the sky. No one knew what it was, even now. Some sort of force had marched up to the smoking ruins of the temple to investigate, but Anders was afraid to ask after them. Afraid to say anything to anyone, lest he be recognized, under the dirt and grime and growth of three years of running, as who he was. As what he was.

The templar failed even to glance up as he passed.

Anders suppressed a sigh. Suppressed the screaming of muscles unused to being asked to carry anything more than a staff and a few scraps of food, if he was lucky enough to have obtained some. If he could just find a healer, someone who could...delve Fenris, and make sure he was all right...

Anders himself couldn't do a thing. He had already tried, back at the overlook, fearing even as he reached that Vengeance would come swarming out of his depths like a storm unleashed. But Vengeance remained locked away, as did even the faintest scrap of magic. Anders told himself this was all right. That he would be fine. That Fenris would be fine. He had avoided most of the strange green debris, after all, when Anders had tackled him. He'd only been nicked. Barely a scratch, really. _Another life's blood on your hands,"_ he thought, and it only being him, alone, thinking it didn't help. He did not need Vengeance around to level accusations at him, it seemed. He could do just as well on his own in that sphere.

"Serrah, do you need the healing?"

Anders would have jumped in surprise had Fenris' weight pressing him down not made that impossible. A bedraggled elf stood before him, a big basket of bandages looped over each arm, both of them mostly empty. Blood, hopefully not her own, spattered across her face and the bodice of her dress in a macabre kind of ornamentation that reminded Anders too much of things he'd seen in Kirkwall. Staring into her tired eyes, his mind ran wild with fear. What was her allegiance? Why was she here? Could she sense his magical abilities? Could anyone? He had no idea the limits of Fenris' qunari poison, or for that matter when it might run out...

"I, ah," he stammered, as the elf continued to look at him. "No. Not me. But this--this man, he--"

"I'm sorry, sirrah, but we're only helping those as have a chance, right now," the elf sighed, to bone-weary to manage much in the way of pathos. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get to--"

"He's not _dead!"_ Anders snapped, grabbing at the elf's sleeve as she turned to leave. "Just look at him, won't you? He took a blow to the head, that's all, but it's not _bleeding,_ so--"

The elf did manage pity, now, mixed with a studied blandness as she surveyed the inert form of Fenris slung over Anders' shoulders. "I'm sorry, serrah," she repeated again, ducking out of reach and off into the shuffling masses before Anders could grab her again.

"Maker take you!" Anders hissed. He needed to set Fenris down, but there was nowhere in this damned place that seemed to be organized into a proper hospital--and if there was, he wasn't about to find it by accosting the likes of the elf with the bandages. Grunting with the effort, he started foward again, trying not to think of how easy this would be if he could just channel a thin blue vein of magicka into the elf, just to check and see, just to make sure that nothing had ruptured inside, and if so, it would take but the work of a moment--

_DO IT._

Anders froze, feeling the blood drain from his face as that too-familiar voice, sometimes not even separable from his own, rang faintly, so faintly, from the dark corners of his mind. _No, no, not here, not now, go away!_ he thought, with very real panic. _Not amongst all these people, all they just went through, not--no!_

But in the shifting, mewling crowed that circled him like a river turgid with flotsam, there was the occasional glint of a templar's shield or mace, and he knew Vengeance saw it; felt him stirring.

_No, no, no, no, no._

Whimpering, he dropped Fenris like a sack of potatoes, then began to run his hands over the elf's body, desperately searching. _Where is it? Where would it be?_ Surely he had more; surely Fenris hadn't been depending upon one successful blowdart in a snowstorm to render him unconscious? Anders' hands shook as they scrabbled with buckles and peeled aside layers of armor that glinted like the scales of some dark fish from the deep waters of a far-off land.

_Maker, let there be more, let him have it, let it not have been in his cloak..._ For Anders now remembered there had been a cloak, when he spoke to Fenris in the mouth of the cave, and he had never gone back for it. He feared he wouldn't make it back now, not in time, and if Vengeance fully woke--

_Aha!_

With trembling fingers he withdrew several glass vials from a thin pocket sewn into the lining of the thin tunic that Fenris wore under the black lapping armor. Surely this was it? The substance in each vial looked the same; it had to be the poison. But how to get it into his system? He felt a lethargic presence watching him from within his own mind, its rage rising lumbering and blind like a puppy, and he felt his eyes prick with tears. 

_Go away, go away, go away._

After more ripping and tearing he found another pocket sewn into the other breast, this one containing a thin hollowed-out reed and an odd feathered capsule. _Thank the Maker._ He tried to unscrew the top but he couldn't grip the tiny object; his hands would not hold still.

"You poor man. Do you need help with that?"

Anders looked up through bleary eyes, fear and frustration fueling all sorts of horrid fantasies where his querent turned out to be Meredith, brought back from the dead, or the mage Ella, or any number of people he'd threatened, whom he had shown himself to, possessed, and lived to regret it. He blinked away tears and saw merely another tired face, a stranger, spattered in the blood of others and wearing the robes of the Chantry.

Vengeance stirred.

"Yes, yes I--please. Please hurry," Anders blurted, thrusting the reed and dart out toward stranger. "Just open it, please, just unscrew the top and--here, don't move--"

Fearing his closeness to the acolyte--would he know, somehow, that here was an apostate reeking of years' worth of running?--fearing Vengeance deciding to slay the man where he stood; fearing everything, Anders stood and handed a vial of the precious liquid to the man. "I tried but I can't--I can't--"

"Shh, I understand." The man seemed not to understand at all what the dart was for, but Anders' desire was clear enough. "Here now," the man said, screwing the top back on to the end of the dart. "I don't know which drug this is, but I expect if I did any I'd be taking it out now too, given that," and the tired face nodded upward toward the green hole in the sky, the vortex that revolved slowly and arced putrid lightning as it did so. "Don't tell anyone it was me who helped you, though."

"Of--of course." Anders fought to keep a hysterical laugh from his voice. 

This man was afraid _Anders_ would get _him_ in trouble? The irony! It was all he could do to hold himself still with a rictus on his face that he hoped somewhat resembled a grateful smile. The acolyte moved off to whisper a few words of encouragement to a man with only half a leg left, leaning heavily on a companion, and Anders sank to the ground next to Fenris, his legs turned to jelly.

_WHAAAAAAAAT HAAAVE YOUUU DONNNNNNNNEEE TO MEEEEE--_

No time for the reed, then. Anders had only a rudimentary idea of how he would have gone about it anyway. Gripping the dart firmly in his right fist, the sharp end protruding downwards, he bared his left arm skyward and braced it against Fenris' chest--bare, now, after Anders' frantic riffling through his pockets--staring hard at the point on his arm where he wanted it to go in. Willing his hands to steady, he grit his teeth and hissed through them as he brought the dart down, as hard as he good, slamming it through his skin with what really, a tiny part of him thought, should have been a more monumentous sound, something more desperate. Not the homely little _thuck_ that he got.

_One...two...three..._

When the darkness started to play at the edges of his vision, he could have wept for joy. It had worked. Fumbling from what seemed an increasingly greater distance, he removed the dart from his arm and tucked it safely back into the reed where hopefully it wouldn't prick Fenris or himself as he passed out. Shoving the reed back into the ripped pocket from whence he'd drawn it, he found himself staring woozily at the white markings on Fenris' chest. They seemed different, somehow--what had changed?

From that same chasm of distance, his vision already beginning to tunnel, Anders realized that the markings had stopped moving up and down with the steady breath of the unconscious elf. His head became too heavy to hold up, and he slumped forward, his lips smearing a bit of drool as he slid to a stop atop Fenris's ribcage. From there he could see Fenris' eyes fix him with horror and fury as he held himself still, not breathing. Merely observing. Like a cat about to pounce.

Anders tried to tell him he'd taken the poison again. Tried to tell him he'd tried to get help but the girl with the bandages hadn't stopped. Tried to tell him about the hole in the sky. But his tongue no longer worked, and Fenris was miles away anyway by now, down the dark tunnel Anders entered as willingly this time as he had before, which lead into silence and a magicless vacuum of voices, and vengeance, and torment.

When Anders Woke, riding a rising tide of pain towards greater awareness, as through a fog, cracking his eyes open seemed to take an eternity. The first thing he made out through their crusty slits was the flicker of candlelight--no, reflected candlelight. A reflection bouncing off metal. He blinked, painfully, and when he focused again he recognized the light as flying off the end of a short razor, glintingly close by his face, and a pair of amber eyes observing him impassively above the blade.

"Don't move,"

Fenris growled.

Anders did not move. he wondered how it would feel to die in this state--not even fully conscious, he reasoned; not if fear had not yet managed to surface in his brain. At least Vengeance was quiet. And at least--he remembered the actions preceding his blackout, like water shoulder its way past a clotof logs and moss--at least his attempt to get Fenris to safety had worked. _One less life on my hands._ It did not negate the others, but still it was a small comfort. At least he would die himself.

One second, two. Anders felt the blade against his skin, then, but at his jaw, not his throat. He held his breath, thinking of kitten whiskers against his hand; of sunlight on Lake Calenhad; disappearing in the distance: freedom! Then there was a scraping sensation, the twang of thousands of tiny hairs against cool metal, and Anders realized he was not dead. He was not dying. He was being _shaved._

"I said don't move," Fenris snapped, when Anders' eyebrows darted up. Fenris' glower was resolute; his hand steady. Belatedly, Anders smelled the olive-y tang of shaving oil. His eyes crawled beyond Fenris' amber-eyed scowl to the wooden beams and mud-caulked stones of the room he lay in. Room? They had seen the temple destroyed--where was this room? How long had he been out?

"You were crawling with lice," Fenris' flat tone seemed to imply that this was the only explanation Anders should need--or was going to get. Anders struggled to think through the fug that engulfed his mind, threatening to strongarm him back into its embrace. Since his eyes weren't making any sense, he tried his other sense. The crackle of a fire reached him, along with the smells of woodsmoke and meat roasting. In response, his stomach gurgled, ferocious in its hunger, and he cursed it for its insolence in this delicate situation.

"There's food," Fenris glowered, drawing the blade once more across Anders' exposed neck. The elf seemed as annoyed by the impromptu stomach rumblings as by everything else, and Anders wished he understood. Why they were here; where _here_ was; why he still breathed under Fenris' knife. "That's done, then. Can you sit up?"

Anders considered. "I...think so," he croaked, voice stiff with disuse.

"Then do it." Fenris leaned away and a swishing sound followed--the razor in a bowl of water. "There's a rabbit on the fire."

Tentatively, like a fisherman testing the lake's first freeze, Anders reached out into the dark corners of his mind, probing for _him._ Vengeance was there all right, but dormant--locked away, same as before. He released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and felt eyes on him.

"You wasted a good deal of the poison, taking a dose that large." Firelight played in the elf's eyes, prowled along his markings, making him seem even more dangerous than he already was. "You're only supposed to fill the darts a quarter full."

I...had no idea," Anders mumbled thickly, struggling to rise. He knew he needed to contract the muscles in his abdomen to do it; they just seemed unwilling to listen.

Grimacing, Fenris regarded him for a moment before leaning over, placing a tattooed hand under each of Anders' shoulders and hauling upward. The mage kept going, though, carried by momentum and unable to stop it, and tumbled forward against his caretaker. He heard the hiss of frustration between Fenris' teeth.

"Of course you didn't know," Fenris snapped, shoving Anders upright and holding him there, so he could address him face-to-face. "You didn't purchase the poison! I did. And instead of revealing yourself to be the abomination you are and thus causing any number of the many templars around to blast you out of existence, you stabbed yourself with one of my capsules and rescued me to boot, coming off as some battered apostate hero."

Anders blinked hard. "You were...dead, I thought..."

"No. I wasn't. And since you ensured that, some other wretched apostate thought it appropriate that I tend to you too, since you _saved_ me."

With leaden hands Anders fumbled toward his own neck, touching the smooth skin there in wonder. "It would have been...easy...to kill me."

"I know!" Fenris flung the words out as though they were the darts. "But you just had to haul me into the center of Inquisition's forces, didn't you?"

Anders frowned. "Inquisition?"

"That's what they're calling themselves. Ragtag bunch of scared kids trying to fix the hole in the sky. Lead by some fool who thinks magic can fix magic. Sit up, damn you, I'm not going to hold you all day."

Fenris let go, not entirely gently, and though Anders wavered, ultimately slumping against the bedpost, he was able to remain sitting up. Fenris took the opportunity to get as far away from the mage as possible, past the fire and across the room, pacing.

"I told him what you were. What the poison did. That damn elf. He said any weapon against this was worth reserving in case we needed it. Like that wretched Herald with her hand branded green."

Confused, Anders nevertheless found his eyes lingering on Fenris' lyrium tattoos, and the elf saw his glance and scowled.

"Not like me! She can't control it, doesn't understand it. No one does. And no one understands you either--you're possessed by a demon, what more is there to say?--but oh no, maybe you'll be _useful_ to this precious Inquisition." Fenris leaned on the mantelpiece of the little cottage's hearth, staring into the flames with eyes that smoldered like the coals themselves.

"You came here to kill me,"

Anders said softly.

Fenris nodded, not looking up.

"And they won't let you."

Fenris nodded again.

"Perhaps...you could do the next best thing?"

Fenris did turn away from the flames at that, his eyes lancing thorugh Anders like the blade he wielded with such alacrity. "And what," he sneered, "would you determine that to be, oh wise mage?"

"Make me Tranquil."


	5. Chapter 5

"Absolutely out of the question," the bald elf snapped, once Fenris had stated his request. "That is wrong in more ways than you know."

"It isn't wrong if he asks for it," Fenris countered, wishing he were out in the bitter winds--yes, even under that damnable hole in the sky--rather than closeted indoors with yet another mage. 

"That's not always true!" Solas, typically so quiet and reserved when Fenris had seen him around camp, could tip far into the other extreme, face contorting into a visage of rage Fenris suspected was supposed to frighten him.

_I've seen mages mad with power before,_ he thought blackly, though he declined from voicing this particular anecdote aloud.

Instead he tried another tactic. "When I saw you, in the mountains...before. You said he wasn't quite alone." Fenris paused, searching the mage's face. "You know what he is. Not who he is, but what."

"He is no less a person for all that," Solas replied. "And as it happens, I do know who he is. I made some inquiries."

Fenris felt his jaw tighten. "You what? He'll be killed! Everyone knows what he did!"

Solas fixed him with a speculative look. "Everyone hmm? Then it's a good thing I only asked Varric."

"Varric is...here?"

The mage seemed to have regained control of his wrath; he was anything if off-balance now. Fenris preferred mages not to feel in control; they might be more obvious in their motives that way. "He is indeed," Solas said. "You have not spoken to him?"

"I...no, I haven't." Would Varric spread this widely? Of course he would. Would he? He had told this apostate elf, seemingly in confidence--but telling stories was what Varric did. Even now he could be striding to the hovel where Anders slept, the Seeker in tow, all set to string him up or behead him or however this fledgling organization dispensed justice...

"Why do you care what happens to him, if I may ask?"

Fenris' eyes hooded in suspicion. Some sort of magical mind-reading trick? But the elf sat easily in the rickety chair where Fenris had interrupted his reading; he did not evince the body language of someone in the process of a complicated, subtle spell. Then again, mages could be tricky like that. 

"You may not ask," Fenris snarled.

"So you expect to obtain my help in making a captured mage Tranquil, despite being unwilling to tell me a thing about him except that he wants this--he who passes in and out of consciousness, mind you, and is no way capable, you assure me, of making these claims to me for himself. You would be content to let me assume anything about him I like, had I not sought information on what he actually did from someone who was actually there." Solas paused, stroking his chin. "Someone whom you very much wish weren't here to inform me on such matters."

"I fail to understand the point of this." Fenris eased toward the doorway, already planning his rush back to the hut where he had left Anders. If Varric was telling people about him, there could be a riot with torches at any moment. His gaze snapped back to Solas, though, as the elf rose deftly from his chair, his eyes alight.

"The point is this," Solas intoned, stepping forward slowly, measured, like a cat, and as dangerous. "You do not understand why he brought you here. You do not understand why he did what he did. In lieu of understanding you prefer to cut him off from the Fade and from the spirit inside him--an excuse not to understand. Not to need to understand, because there would be nothing left." Solas stood directly before Fenris now, taller, commanding. "I will not be the instrument of your ignorance, warrior." Surely he was not using magic to deepen his voice, lengthen his shadow--yet Fenris felt smaller, somehow. Younger. Like a child. "Begone."

Fenris backed out of the cabin, a host of Tevene cursewords on his tongue that never left his lips. Once he was out of sight of the cabin, he began to run. 

By the time he came abreast of their shelter, he had resumed his habitual scowl, and slowed down--if only somewhat. No pitchforks stuck up around the surrounding clamor; no cries for vengeance cut through the busy sounds of clanging practice weapons, hammering farriers, crackling fires or the voiceless bustle of beings at work. It seemed, for the moment, that the situation was still under his control. He breathed a sigh of relief that puffed out in front of his face in the frigid mountain air; a cloud to be cleaved in two with his body.

The sigh cut itself short, though, as he pushed open the door onto the gold piping and rich red brocade coat of Varric Tethras, perched awkwardly on a barrel by the doorway and eyeing the unmoving form of the mage with an infuriatingly unreadable face. A face which remained impassive as he turned around to greet Fenris, whispering huskily on account of the sleeper behind him."

"Fancy meeting you here, Broody. Long time no see."

"Varric," Fenris hissed, remembering at ht last minute not to slam the door behind him. He took his frustration out on his clunky mountain boots instead; he hated the way they slowed him down, made him feel detatched from the earth beneath his feet. He yanked them off with a savagery he might have liked to have brought to Solas' neck.

"Good to see you too," Varric whispered, voice bland.

"You told him! Who is he? What does he want with...all this?" Fenris' hands jerked wide, intending to encompass the Inquisition and the town of Haven and all the chaos that seemed endemic to both. 

The dwarf took another meaning, however. "I think the better question is what _you_ want with all this." His eyes traveled over the emaciated, if cleaned and shaved, form of their one-time companion, what seemed lifetimes ago. "Solas tells me you came here together."

"Not _together,"_ Fenris snapped, forgetting to whisper. On the bed, Anders stirred, and both elf and dwarf held their breaths until Anders fell back into the sleep of exhaustion that gripped him. "I was hunting him," he continued in a furious whisper. "I found him and I had him and I...there was an explosion." 

"Oh I know about that part. I was there. Demons, green light, the whole in the sky, I was there for that. But Anders? Don't think I'm insulting your abilities but...how is he still alive?"

Fenris shoved a lyrium-etched hand angrily through his hair; felt is snag on tangles. Of course he was a mess; he probably smelled like something dead. _I should be dead._ And there it was: his fury at losing control of the knowledge of Anders' identity, and his frantic dash back to this place. A debt owed, however loathsomely. He did not like debt.

"He wants to be made Tranquil," Fenris said.

"I don't know that I blame him." Varric's square face creased into a frown as he turned back to the sleeping mage. "To be honest I'm surprised he's still...well...that sort of thing weighs on you after awhile." He shook his head as if to clear it of clinging shadows. "You asked Chuckles, then? What did he say?"

Fenris stared blankly. 

"I mean Solas. The bald mage type who couldn't crack a smile to save his life." Varric paused, eyeing Fenris up and down. "He's not too different from you, Broody, come to think of it."

Fenris snorted. "Really, Varric? This is hardly a laughing matter."

The dwarf shrugged. "That's exactly why you should. Or else you'll forget how."

Fenris did not deign to respond to this. "The apostate said no. Resoundingly so."

"Lucky bastard."

Fenris' brows furrowed, before he followed Varric's gaze and realized he was talking about Anders again. "I don't know that of all possible adjectives, lucky would be one I apply to that abomination."

"Really? The second most-hunted mage in Thedas winds up in a camp half-full of templars, and he has people standing up left and right to keep him from being made Tranquil. That counts as pretty lucky in my book."

"You're just here for your book, aren't you? This is all just fodder to you for your next best-seller."

Varric stared up at him levelly under brows that glinted in the firelight. "Yeah, because getting kidnapped and dragged from my home in Kirkwall to the ass-end of the world, just in time to watch the sky tear open, is definitely my idea of a tidy bit of field research." His glare hardened. "You know what your problem is, elf? You can't stand it when anyone does anything for you. Especially people you don't like. Which, let's face it, means just about everyone." He looked at Anders. "He saved your ass, didn't he. And you have no idea what to do about it--a mage like him, doing what he did to those people, not to mention his--" Here he paused. "Did you tell Solas about that?"

Fenris welcomed the concrete question; it kept him from having to deal with anything that came before it. "I did not need to," he growled. "He knew."

"Of course he did."

"You were planning on keeping it a secret?"

Varric huffed angrily out his nose, trying and failing to keep his voice to a gravelly whisper. "Maker's balls, no. If you'd spent the last few months being interrogated you'd be a little more cautious with your information too, is all I meant."

"You didn't seem to feel any great need for discretion when the apostate came knocking."

"You're right, I didn't," Varric countered. "Because he didn't come knocking. I asked."

"You asked him to what?"

The dwarf threw up his hands, sending angry gold sparks racing along the edging of his coat. Reflected firelight; reflected frustration. "To, I don't know, evaluate him! See what he was, and if it could be...fixed!"

"You barely knew this man."

"Exactly how many options did you think I had? I knew perfectly well what you'd do to Anders if you had your way."

"I am the one who found him!"

Varric's stare was cold now, not a trace of the fire about it. "And do you own him, then?"

"How dare you speak to me of such things, when you know--"

The dwarf cut him off ruthlessly. "You're right, I do know. So I know what I'm saying when I call what you're doing pointless vengeance."

_"He's_ the one who--"

"They had invoked the Rite of Annulment, Fenris."

"That demon inside him should pay for his crimes!" the elf roared, in no way whispering anymore.

"It wasn't Vengeance who did it." The thin reed of a voice from beneath the furs startled elf and dwarf alike. "It was me."

Fenris felt his lips curl into a sneer. "This is exactly why you should be made Tranquil."

Anders stared out from a bleak place and nodded. "I know."

_"Some_ of us appear to need convincing." Fenris shot a look at Varric, making his meaning plain.

"They won't do it?"

Varric sat, gingerly, on the edge of the bed, as though afraid Vengeance might burst forth at any moment and blast him to pieces. "Half the camp is made up of rebel mages, Anders. They think you're a hero. Or at the very least, someone who had...reasons."

Anders paled. "They know I'm here?"

"No, not yet." Varric glanced at Fenris. "Though I'm sure Broody here running through the camp like darkspawn were after him won't help us keep off anyone's map..."

A light that had flickered to life in Anders face upon mention of Tranquility guttered out. "What does it matter? Let them discover me. Perhaps then they will see reason and perform the rite."

"It's not that simple--" Varric began, but Fenris stalked into the center of the room and cut him off, his hands knifing sharply through the air as he gestured.

"It is exactly that simple and you know it. Did you step forward to spare him at Kirkwall? No. Because back then you knew the weight of what he'd done. Why spare him now? Why fight for his ability to eke out some paltry existence with that...thing...growing inside him like a canker sore?"

Both elf and dwarf turned to look at Anders after this statement, to gauge its effect on him. His eyes were distant, though, leaden as dirty snow--and as hopeless. He faced them but did not see them. 

"All those people," he whispered, more to himself than to anyone else.

Fenris could feel the question in Varric's eyes--the one that should have been in Anders' deadened gaze. He wanted to deflect; to use his kneejerk orneriness as a shield and a curtain. But he had almost died, numerous times, at Varric's side. Had witnessed the worst of humanity and fought through it toward a semblance of decency. At Varric's side. Deflection seemed disingenuous, a betrayal of their time in Kirkwall, however long ago it had been.

"You are right, dwarf," Fenris grated. Necessary this may be, but he could not make his voice like it. "About...why."

Varric raised an eyebrow. "You're going to have to be a little clearer than that, Broody. I'm afraid my surly elf parsing skills are a little rusty."

Fenris swallowed back a churlish retort and stumbled onward. "I came here to hunt him. To kill him. I didn't plan on...this." The breach, the explosion, all the other lives, strangers' lives, wiped away in an instant. His could have been one of them. Would have been. "I didn't ask for him to--do what he did, but with it done I find I owe him. I...dislike...owing people things."

Varric's quirk of the lips implied that this might have been a gross understatement, but Fenris let it go.

With effort.

"I cannot kill him--I could, but it might be too...easy." He swallowed, not looking at Anders. "For it all to be done. For the responsibility, its weight, to just...evaporate like that."

"You have a funny way of giving gifts," was all Varric said.

"It's what I want," Anders interjected. Fenris turned to look at him now--bleary-eyed, sitting up, but looking like he might tip back over again at any minute. "Maybe as a Tranquil I could still...help. With this." They all knew what he meant. They had all avoided mentioning the hole in the sky in the same way. "I know a bit about healing, after all. It's not all magic. I could boil salves, cut bandages. It wouldn't...ever add up to..." He seemed to want to seal his parched lips up; to stop the words. _So many fears we dare not name._ "To what I did," he finished in a rush. "But it might still help. Make me of use. You don't need to feel to help."

Varric opened his mouth, closed it. Said nothing.

"The elf said no," Fenris said, watching Anders' face as he said it."

"The elf...he was here, wasn't he? Earlier."

Fenris frowned. "Not to my knowledge." He glanced at Varric, who shook his head.

"He was here," Anders insisted." You were away...yesterday? The day before? I had been sleeping. It was bright out. It lit him in the doorway, a shadow in the glare."

Varric and Fenris exchanged looks. Was he cracking under the strain, at last?

Anders seemed not to see them, though, and looked inward. "He said I was a rarity. Terrible but...a rarity, still. He knew I'd changed Justice into Vengeance, that it was my fault. He asked to talk to him, to Vengeance, but I couldn't...I couldn't find him, didn't want to...didn't know if he was already there or not. Maybe he spoke to the elf instead of me." Anders licked parched lips. "Maybe I was just watching. The elf knew so much about me. About us."

Varric coughed loudly. "If this is really...if this is truly something you want to do, Anders--" _He's not calling him Blondie,_ Fenris realized, "--then you don't need Solas' approval to do it. There's someone here who would welcome the opportunity, in fact."

Fenris saw the flicker of fear in the mage's eyes. Would they be erasing his capacity for that? Would such a thing be just?

"Cullen," he said, realizing.

A resignation settled in the lines of Anders' face; in the set of his lips. "The knight-captain?"

"Former knight-captain," Varric put in quickly, "but yes. The very same. I doubt he would see much of a problem with making you Tranquil. If that's what you're sure you want. 

Anders' face folded into a quizzical frown, coming back fully into the present. "It is, Varric. Why do you keep asking me that? You were there. You saw. It was only me doing that."

The dwarf held his gaze for a long moment, until a shower of sparks bursting forth as a log collapsed in the fireplace broke the spell. "I'm not sure I believe that," he sighed. "But I can speak to Cullen if you're asking it of me."

"The apostate said he could be a weapon," Fenris blurted, not knowing why he did so. "Against that thing in the sky."

"I do not want to be a weapon anymore." Anders' eyes were as hollow as his gaunt cheeks as he met Fenris' glower.

"Since when did what you want begin to--" Fenris began.

"Since you drugged him instead of killing him," Varric growled, jumping off the bed where he'd been perching and striding to the door. "Enough, Fenris. He says he wants this, and you know Cullen will do it." He grimaced. "I'm not sure I want this to be spreading all over camp. These people need hope, not what happens when you run out of it." He disappeared, the sudden, golden light flaring around him as he left, an echo of the dream Anders had described.

What had to have been a dream.

Fenris made to follow him, an argument already bubbling to the surface, but he paused as Anders croaked his own name.

"Fenris?"

"What, mage."

"Please don't...please don't go."

Fenris' face clouded over like a mountain range, his anger given a new course down which to crash avalanche-like toward earth. "Why would you you need me to--"

"He's coming back."

Fenris froze.

"Vengeance, he's...he's coming back. I need you to use your poison again before..." He trailed off, his body somehow managing to spare enough moisture to make his eyes shine. "Please."

Fenris paused one second. Two. Then he crept back into the room, oddly tentative in the lengthening shadows of late afternoon, and pulled the darts and glass vials from his person, measuring carefully as the light played around the edges of the glass, as it would on the waters of a brook or a stream. Laughing at them both.


	6. Chapter 6

"What do you mean you can't do it?"

Cullen sighed, grinding the heels of his hands into this eyes. Varric thought he could almost hear the sound of sleepless grit; the commander--not knight-commander, now--seemed to be everywhere at once in Haven. Except resting.

"I mean that I can't do it."

"Look, I don't recall you having a lot of warm feelings for Anders, last time I checked. I know it's not a sword to the gut but at least you could--"

"Varric, you're not listening. I am...unable to perform that service anymore."

Cullen's red-rimmed eyes, wan in their dark hollows, bored into Varric until he thought he understood.

"You're not taking lyrium anymore, are you."

Cullen squeezed his eyes shut. "For a writer, your perception is flagging. No, I'm not longer taking lyrium. Not since...then."

Varric scrubbed his thumb across his jaw, giving the commander's admission the silence it seemed to need. Around them he could feel the great stone building that served as the basis of the Inquisition's operations writhing with activity. At least a third of that activity--messages waiting to be received, orders waiting to be signed, supplies waiting to be inspected--was on hold now, because of him. He could almost feel the flow of the place burbling to a halt behind the splintered wooden door to the war room. He was sure Cullen could feel it, too.

"Is there anyone else who could do it, you know. Discreetly?" Varric asked after a moment.

"Half the camp consists of templars, Varric. Couldn't you ask one of them?"

"Yes, but--you know this better than anyone, Commander. Soldiers talk." 

"And just why do you want this kept secret, anyway? The man is a criminal and should be dead. We've no time for a trial or I'd see to it myself. Who cares if people know that he--"

"That's just it, Commander. People _do_ care. A great deal. And if they know who he is, he'll have a knife between the ribs the first night he wanders alone among the tents, tending wounds or whatever it is he thinks he'll be so good at."

Cullen's eyes drifted to the war table; they were losing their focus on Varric and exchanging it for troop movements and supply outposts. "And would that be so bad?" he said at length. "His death? After all that he has done--"

Varric slammed his hand on the table, making the figures on it jump. "You said the reason you weren't going to kill him was that there should be a trial. You want to abide by the law. How exactly are you doing that if you're rendering him defenseless right before sending him into an army who has every reason to hate him? And announcing his presence before doing it? You might as well draw the blade on him yourself." He glared up from his lesser height, and it didn't seem to matter a whit, that difference. "At least _that_ would be more honest."

He had Cullen's full attention, now, and the similarities between the Commander and the fallen mage on whose behalf Varric found himself arguing were unnerving. The same cracked lips, the same worn creases around the eyes, ushering in--crying out for--sleep that came all too rarely. Had the gift, or curse, of magic gone the other way, there was little to say that each might have lived the other's life, storing up hatred and distrust against mages and templars, respectively, until something snapped. As had happened, of course.

"If it had been you, Commander--" Varric began, but Cullen cut him off.

"It wasn't, Varric. It wasn't." He rubbed his eyes again, before sighing. "Cassandra. Ask Cassandra. She can do it."

Varric's jaw dropped. "The Seeker? Commander, I don't know if she's mentioned how she feels about me, but I'm pretty certain she'd rather hang up her sword than do anything I--"

"This isn't for you, Varric. Right? This is for the...for Anders. Ask her. She can do it." He stifled a yawn behind a gauntlet, eyes as ever drawn back to the war table, to calculations. To the problems of the present, and not to what he saw as the dark shadows of a dead past.

"All right," the dwarf said. He could do no more here, and he supposed Cullen was right in the end anyway. For all that she might despise him, Cassandra had no trouble keeping secrets. Accepting the fact that there were secrets kept from her, now...but that was a problem for another day. _Hopefully never,_ he thought as he let himself out.

Behind him, the too-pale form of the Commander under his furry ruff bent over the table, still, anchored with ink and metal figures to a world not yet lost to blood and battle like Kirkwall had been. _Maybe he'll get to save this one,_ Varric thought grimly, letting the heavy door on its recently-greased hinges thunk shut behind him. _I hope to the Maker he figures out how._

*****

Halfway to the clearing, with the Seeker up ahead hacking savagely away at any undergrowth foolish enough to enter their path, Fenris caught Anders staring raptly at a tree off to their left. Instinctively, the elf reached for his sword, eyes darting up and down the tree and back into the timberline beyond. Seeking enemies. He saw no movement, though--not even a squirrel--and continued to glare into the surrounding brush until Anders spoke. 

"I will miss green," he said, though Fenris had not asked.

Now, of course, he had to.

"What do you mean? it's not as if they're blinding you," he snapped.

Anders shook his head, craning back to catch a last glimpse of the tree before its fellows swallowed it. "How I feel about green will be taken."

"The tree? It looked like any other."

Anders shook his head again, continuing on in that pained voice that was at once inches away and yet impossibly far. "Didn't you see? It was charred, it had been struck by lightning--it should have been dead. But that little green shoot in the middle, among the black, it--" He swallowed. "I will miss that," he added, then fell silent.

"You are having second thoughts?" Fenris felt his hand twitch toward his sword, seemingly of its own accord.

"No, I...no." Anders turned to look at him, faintly aglitter with stubble and sunlight. Fenris had not shaved him again, and he had not asked for a razor. "It is isn't as though I'll really miss it anyway," he said softly, pitching his voice lower so neither Cassandra ahead nor Varric behind could hear. "Missing--longing--requires feeling, and that will go away. So I may regret the idea of it now but when it's done that will be...gone." His face was both open and closed, pained and pinched into a kind of grim half-smile.

It was an intimacy Fenris found himself balking at, and his words grated harshly in reply. "Pointless poetics, mage. Walk faster." He jerked his head forward toward Cassandra, and Anders obligingly picked up the pace. Neither of them paid any mind to Varric's shouts behind them--Varric, whose theatrical grumbling had grown ever more pronounced, ever more contrived and jokey, the closer they came to their goal. He was not comfortable with this and they all knew it. They also knew that he was not willing to hide himself way while they did the deed, either. 

_We're all just fodder for his stories in the end,_ Fenris thought. Even he recognized the thought as uncharitable, but there it was. He was not feeling very charitable today.

Cassandra had been reluctant at first, but Varric had prevailed on her to try and keep the matter as quiet as possible, in order to avoid the precipitous loss in morale and the increase in tension that a widely-publicized Rite of Tranquility might entail. Hence the trek to the forest outside and above Haven, and hence her angry hacking away at bushes: she was on a tight schedule, with the Herald awaiting her return for a trip to Val Royeaux that should have begun that morning. Fenris had, when asked, admitted that he did not think he had enough of the qunari mage poison left to last Anders through the days a diplomatic foray into Orlais might take.

So here they were. Fenris had not been present when Varric approached the Seeker, though he imagined from the relatively few words the two had exchanged since then that it wasn't the most amicable of meetings. He knew the Seeker had come to Kirkwall, to "question" Varric, but Fenris had never met her; he had already been on the road, hunting down blood mages, by the time Cassandra came looking for information. She seemed capable enough--she practiced daily in the open expanse before Haven; she had a good sword arm, Fenris thought--but her opinions on Anders, both as a person and as a mage, were a mystery to him.

That thought stopped him cold, bringing him up short such that Anders bumped into him. _As a person?_ Since when had that mattered? When had it become a distinction Fenris acknowledged? He would never do so aloud, of course, but still--even in the sanctity of his own head, such a consideration frightened him. Look at what Anders had done--not even the demon inside him but Anders, the man. He had even admitted as much, just yesterday! 

So why did Fenris keep combing the trees with his eyes for threats, oddities, anything that might distract them and veer them off this righteously-hacked path toward an act both he and the mage himself had arranged for?

It was infinitely simpler, Fenris thought, when you hunted a ghost, a rumor, an idea. Attaching the words people exchanged with such vitriol to a person--one with whom you used to work, however unhappily--was a complication. The sort of thing he thought freedom protected against.

"We should probably keep moving," croaked Anders, at his side now.

Fenris stomped forward with the taste of bile in his throat.

At last, they arrived. They knew this by the sudden displacement of sunstars spangling budded branches with full morning sun, shining onto the patches of spring snow still left from the storm and setting the little clearing ablaze with white light. They knew it, too, by the impassive face of Cassandra, turned toward them to wait amidst the crisp air and trees that smelled like the idea of spring.

No one said anything until Varric puffed into the clearing, looking out of breath and half-blinded, as they had been, by the dazzle of sun on snow. He opened his mouth to complain, perhaps to make another woefully inadequate attempt at a joke, but then thought better of it. He swung Bianca off his shoulder and began to wipe the drips from the trees off her with the tail end of his blood-colored sash.

Into the silence, Anders spoke, his voice strangely gentle. "I know you have to leave, Cassandra--"

"I was supposed to have left already," the Seeker said stiffly. 

Anders winced. "I know. I am...sorry. But could I have a moment?"

Cassandra's face darkened, preparing a protest, but Varric put a hand on her arm. "It's a beautiful morning, Seeker," the dwarf pleaded in his gravelly voice. "Can't you at least give him that?"

"Fine." Cassandra shook off Varric's hand in distaste and strode to the far side of the clearing. "Hurry up," she said, before turning a quarter turn away--her back not entirely to the possessed mage, for obvious reasons--and leaning against a tree.

Varric headed toward the opposite side of the clearing, and Fenris turned toward a spot roughly between the two, but Anders touched his shoulder as he did so. 

He almost phased out of his skin, he was so startled.

"Fenris," the mage said. 

"What!" Fenris was embarrassed by his fear; expressed it in anger.

The mage's eyes brimmed with the light that showered around them as he held his gaze. It hurt to look. "Could I ask you something?"

Fenris glared. "I thought you needed a moment alone."

"To ask you. If it...if it doesn't work. Or if something goes wrong. You'll do what needs to be done, won't you?"

Fenris scrubbed a gauntleted hand through his hair, ignoring the snags. "We all will. That's why we're here. Why would you ask me that?"

Anders' eyes shone, making his too-thin face seem feverish, alight with false health. "It's just that...well, I don't know Cassandra. and I know Varric. He might hesitate. But you--" His crack-lipped, lop-sided smile hit Fenris like the lump of green fire from the temple explosion almost had. "You've always hated me. You'd do it even if the others couldn't."

Fenris opened his mouth, willing something caustic and biting to come out of it. Sarcasm, a jab about mages or abominations. Anything. But only the sharp tang of mountain air left his lips.

Anders gave him a minute, thinking he meant to speak, but then carried on into the silence. "It's not that I don't trust Cassandra, I know you don't need a whole group to do this--one who knows the ritual will do. And she does. It's just..."

He squeezed those liquor-colored eyes shut and Fenris had to stop himself from sighing in relief--finally he could look away!--"I don't know that it's ever been done to...someone like me. Someone possessed." His eyes flashed open, his voice hardened. "And I don't want to hurt any more people."

Fenris found himself nodding, not because he agreed but because it was a wordless response that asked little of him.

"Promise me you'll do it."

Fenris recovered his scowl; retreated into it like a cocoon. "I already told you I would."

"Promise me."

"Fine." Fenris threw up his hands. "I promise to end you if anything goes wrong."

"Thank you." Anders sagged on his feet, a tightly-wound string suddenly struck, his energy fleeing like a lost chord. Fenris had to catch him under his elbow to keep him upright.

"Tell the Seeker I'm ready."

Fenris turned to do so but found that Cassandra had been watching the whole thing, and was already striding back toward them through patches of melting snow.

"Drink this." In her hand she held a glowing blue vial. Fenris could sense the lyrium; the same substance sang in his tattoos. Anders eyed the vial dubiously.

"What if--"

"It won't. Drink it." Cassandra watched him intently as he held the vial to his lips, though, perhaps investing less faith in her words than she let on.

"It won't counteract the poison, will it?" Fenris asked.

"No," Cassandra said flatly.

"Monosyllables, from you? Never a good sign, Seeker."

Unbeknownst to all of them, Varric too had returned from the edge of the clearing, with a heavy cast to his features. "You can still call this off, you knw," he told Anders. The note of tenderness there filled Fenris with horror and fury in turns. Was Varric _trying_ to set the mage loose upon the world? And what right did he have to talk to Anders as though he were his father?

Anders shook his head, though. "I can't, Varric. I won't." His gaze swept in all three of them for the briefest of moments, and then he tossed the liquid back in one gulp, the luminescent blue disappearing between his lips with startling swiftness. Fenris found himself wondering if the mage had had access to lyrium in his travels; if he had pined for it. If its touch to his lips, burning down the back of his throat and into his veins, was like the return of a long-lost lover.

"Get it over with," Fenris growled, and even he wasn't sure whom he meant.

Cassandra met his glare with one of her own. "The ritual is not something to be rushed. Nor are its workings public knowledge." She jerked her head away to the right. "Give us space."

Fenris hesitated, as did Varric, but the Seeker remained implacable. They walked away, stopping atop a mushy snowbank beneath a pine tree to watch. Icy cold fingers of snowmelt dripped down the back of Fenris' neck, making him shudder.

"Creepy shit," Varric commented, misinterpreting the gesture. After a moment he added, "I don't think I will ever understand that guy."

Fenris snorted. In the clearing Anders kneeled before Cassandra, bowing his head and closing his eyes. "What's to understand?"

"Not a whole lot, in a few minutes." The catch in Varric's throat betrayed the flippancy in his words, and the man grew quiet.

Fenris thought of the exploding Chantry, of the Temple, of green fire, of poison darts. Of years spent on the road, speckled with mud and frozen with sleet; blasted by sun and sand and wind.

_I don't want to be a weapon anymore._

Fenris closed his eyes. He heard Cassandra speak in a low voice; he couldn't make out the words. Ages seemed to pass. Then there was a crackle and a blue flare striking his face, through his eyelids, and he whipped his sword off his back in one fluid motion.

Cassandra, too, had drawn her sword, and held it ready to strike. Before her on the ground Anders twisted and writhed, his frail body contorting into shapes it shouldn't have been able to. Blue arcs, a kind of lightning, sheathed his body, coming in waves that sometimes left his face--the whites of his eyes--visible, and sometimes not.

Fenris took a lurching step forward but Cassandra--glowing, too, he now saw, but with a white light, not blue--motioned him back with a sharp jab of her free hand. He could hear Varric clicking Bianca into firing position next to him, but he could not tear his eyes away from the scene in the center of the clearing: mud and dead brush puddled up in great sweeping arcs where Anders scrabbled, his hands digging into the earth like claws, his heels drumming a frantic beat into the brilliance of the morning. Fenris could see flashes of his teeth--his mouth was open--but no sound came out; not a whine or a whimper.

Then, just as suddenly, the mage collapsed into the mess he had made, unmoving in the dirt. Fenris and Varric dashed forward, skidding to a halt behind the Seeker, who had raised a gauntleted hand. 

"It doesn't usually happen like that," she breathed, every inch of her strung taut as a bowstring, ready to fire. "It may not have worked."

"Justice," Varric said.

"Be ready, in case it--look out!"

Anders stirred, and three pairs of hands gripped their weapons. His hands twitched and his eyes fluttered open--and Fenris saw the brand that hung between them, mostly-obscured by dirt and mud and the mage's own hair, but present all the same. 

Beneath it, those amber eyes focused and...didn't focus. They absorbed light but gave none back--they crawled to each of the faces above, in turn, and Fenris felt as though he were looking into a cave, or a dried-up well.

"Thank you, Seeker, Varric, Fenris," Anders said. From an unbridgeable distance.

Fenris reached to help him to his feet, not knowing what he was doing until the man's hand was in his own.

His fingers were cold, as though he'd just come out of the Deep Roads. Or the grave.


	7. Chapter 7

"I tried to find Varric. He has gone away with the Herald."

Fenris groaned. That dead, empty voice grated on him more than any feckless sarcasm ever had. It had been doing so for weeks now. "Where are they running off to now?"

"I am not certain. Somewhere to the east, I believe."

_Well, that's hardly saying much. All it rules out is Orlais._

"Do you have any idea when they'll be back?"

"I do not."

Fenris whirled on that placid face, those too-familiar eyes that had become so terribly, terribly distant, emptied even of umbrage. "Does it not matter to you? Have you no interest in where they are, what they're doing?"

The shell that was Anders blinked, the motion causing the brand on his forehead to twitch. "I am not sure what you mean. I am certain they will tell us when they return where they have gone." He paused. "Or they will tell you, and you will tell me."

"But what if I don't?" Fenris blurted. "What if I tell you nothing, if no one does! Wouldn't that upset you? Don't you want to know?"

"You know I am unlikely to get upset," Anders replied reasonably. So damned reasonably.

"Don't you care, you stupid mage? Doesn't it matter to you which side they choose in this war?"

"I see that you are upset. I will return to the herbalist's hut. Perhaps he will have need of me."

Fenris opened his mouth to demand Anders stay--but to what end? The blond ponytail bobbed out of view, and he let it go. There was nothing to say.

There hadn't been anything to say since that day in the woods outside Haven. They had returned, Anders had rested a day--his sleep sound, undisturbed by the murmurs and tossing and turning that had plagued his sleep in the early days of their arrival--and then he had presented himself to the camp's chief herbalist, in order to assist with any menial tasks he might deign to assign. He had wisely avoided seeking to assist the Chantry mothers tending to their wounded, for the quite-correct reason that they would want little to do with an ex-mage. Tranquil or not. There was, too, the heightened visibility such a role would have brought to someone best kept out of the public eye. The herbalist, meanwhile, was a busy, fractious man who could care less if one was capable of expression or emotion--all he wanted were the herbs ground, the poultices prepared in a precise fashion, and that was a service Anders was more than capable of providing.

That was the trouble, though, Fenris thought, stalking to a window to watch the mage make his methodical way between the cabins of the little town, toward the herbalist and out of sight. _More than capable._ Tranquil did not lose their memories upon losing their emotions, their ability to _care_ about things. But even retaining this knowledge of his own abilities--he had been the lone physician for the entirety of Kirkwall's Darktown!--did nothing to spur Anders to grander stages than the back of an herbalist's hut. There was nothing he _wanted,_ and Fenris found that strangely galling.

_What business is it of mine?_ He got what he wanted, and even that was a generosity, compared to what they could have doled out to him at Kirkwall. _Compared to what I would have done to him if I found him in time._

Scowling, Fenris dropped the blackened metal vambrace he had been polishing--for the third time that day, at least--and strode out of the suddenly-stifling cabin, into the scintillating midday mountain sunlight. The familiar cloud heralding his own breath rose to meet him as he moved, and he felt the chill in the earth rise up through the soles of his bootless feet. He would not go back for the boots, though. He did not want to be indoors a minute longer.

Fenris sensed people withdraw from him as he stalked through the village, his anger a palpable thing. No one wished to cross the strange elf with the prowling gait and the glowing tattoos. Even amongst faces composed, by the very nature of their quest, of individuals from all walks of life, Fenris stood out. He didn't care. If it made them move out of his way, so much the better. 

His feet carried him away from the jovial cries of the tavern--even if that annoying archer the Herald had brought back from Val Royeaux had left with Varric and the others, Fenris still did not feel he could tolerate the too-eager bard's attempts to compose songs about tight-lipped, white-haired elves--and he veered away, too, from the imposing Chantry building and all that was being decided therein. No one in their knew him, or at least none of them trusted him as well as they ought to, and even Cullen would tell him nothing. Perhaps it was his association with Anders that sealed their lips around him; perhaps he was simply a naturally suspicious person, with his strange looks and short temper. But they would tell him nothing, he knew, and he would not waste his time.

Out the gates, then; skirting the practice grounds swiftly, as he could not stand mediocrity. He wandered east, down the main road and then--when it was clear that the supply wagons plodding in, their drivers seeking news, would in no way leave him in peace, angry demeanor or no--off onto a side-path, among evergreens cloaked in fresh snowfall. The air bristled with the tang of their needles; Fenris could almost taste them on his tongue.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

Fenris leapt--actually leapt--in fright, turning it midair into an angry whirl. Behind him, tucked primly on a fallen log wiped free of snow on one end, sat the apostate elf Solas, his staff propped against a tree and his hands holding a fistful of tiny green plants.

"I apologize. I didn't mean to startle you."

Fenris glared. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be off with the Herald?"

"Left behind, the same as you." Solas spread his hands wide, encompassing the trees that glittered in their snowy mantles like kings; the sky that blasted a pristine blue down at them through craggy peaks. "It isn't so bad, surely."

"I thought you were in her inner circle," Fenris growled, because, at a loss for anything else to say, he wanted to hurt the elf's feelings. 

Solas smiled wryly. "I don't know that there is much of a circle to be within, yet, but yes, I am. One can only fit so many of one's own people into a diplomatic entourage, however, before it begins to look...as though one is harboring insecurities." He turned to the plants in his hand, twirling a fragile stem between his fingers. "And so I am here," he added softly.

"Do you know, then, where they went?"

Solas looked up at him. "I do not. The Herald keeps her own council, and her advisers are at odds on the issue. They might not have known where they were going even when they started out on the road."

"Seems foolish."

Solas shrugged. "Such decisions should not be made lightly. Sometimes they require more time than one would wish." He gestured to the swept part of the log next to him. "Would you care to sit?"

Fenris ignored the offer. "You clearly have an opinion on which side the Herald should align us with."

Solas quirked a smile. "Us? I wasn't aware that you had warmed so to the Inquisition already."

"You try me, mage."

"My apologies. I remember what it is to be young and...assured, all the time."

"You know nothing of my mind!"

"No?" Solas set the plants--elfroot, Fenris supposed--beside him on the log and rose in one fluid motion, striding toward Fenris but then slightly to the side, circling him. "I know that you chafe at the lack of information the Inquisition is willing to share with you. That you think it might be because of Anders, but you're not sure. That anger fills you, as wine fills a cup, brimming over at the slightest touch." Here the elf's long fingers reached out and brushed Fenris' shoulder; he hated that he flinched. He hated it because Solas had known it would happen. "And I know," the apostate continued, circling around to face him again, "that you feel regret for the man you made Tranquil, and you have no idea what to do with such an unlooked-for emotion."

"Regret!" Fenris snarled, feeling exposed and wishing he had taken his sword out with him, for peace of mind if nothing else. "What is there to regret? You weren't there. You didn't see. You didn't see what he _did."_

Solas' face remained as damnably unreadable as it always did. "Sometimes to achieve the world one desires, one must take regrettable measures."

"Of course you would say that! You, an apostate mage who--who would see all mages roaming free, practicing blood magic, spawning abominations across the land--"

"Abominations such as yourself?"

Fenris gaped, tasting the bile rising in his throat as all the furious refutations collided in his mind, fighting over which could get out first. "I am _nothing_ like, like--" he stammered in rage. 

"Let me see your hand."

Before Fenris could react, the apostate had plucked Fenris' hand from the air where it had been about to gesture wildly, and brought it to his mouth, turning it over so his wrist and the lyrium markings there faced upward. These he brought to his lips, slowly, looking down at them, entirely engrossed in the markings and paying no attention whatever to the apoplectic face of Fenris before him. Fenris saw the tongue a split second before he felt it, a moist touch on his wrist, and to his horror he saw the markings glow brighter where Solas touched him, as though responding to the pull of a tide. It was then that Solas looked up, only his eyes, face and tongue otherwise unmoving. Like a wolf drinking at a stream, caught unawares and frozen still. Watching.

Fenris yanked his hand away with a grunt.

"You see?" Solas asked, completely unperturbed. "You wish to expand the definition of abomination to include all mages--everyone having anything to do with magic. But you number among the very people you wish to condemn." He smiled. "Interesting, is it not?"

Fenris felt his teeth grate. "This was done _to_ me! I did not choose these markings!"

"And yet you do not seek to be rid of them."

"Of course not! They are mine, I suffered for them!" 

"And did Anders not suffer for taking in the spirit Justice? Did it not cause him pain?"

Fenris felt as though he teetered on the edge of a cliff, one that he had been vaguely aware of for days and had so far been able to ignore, for the most part. It was a long way down, though.

"I was like you, once," Solas said then, bending down to retrieve his bundle of plants from the log where he had left them. "Cocky and certain most of the time, angry and impetuous the rest." 

"We are nothing alike," Fenris insisted, and if it was with a smidgen less vitriol this time, he chose not to hear it.

Solas smiled and shook his head. "It would be easier if we weren't. For you." He gestured with his plants. "I have to deliver these herbs to the healer. If you'll pardon me."

Fenris blinked. "They have people to do that."

"I know. Your Tranquil included."

"He's not _my--"_

"Save my life and tell me I am not yours."

He said it so simply, with no hidden barbs or currents to his words, and yet there was such an ache in the odd elf's eyes that Fenris felt his mouth go dry. He didn't know how deep that pain ran, but it made the precipice of his own guilt feel like a ditch to be jumped over, rather than the chasm that opened up in Solas' wry, sad smile.

"I'm sorry," Fenris blurted. The words were out before he could take them back, though he felt like ripping them from the air. "He wanted it, asked for it but...I'm sorry all the same."

Solas held out the herbs. "Take these to him. An excuse. Tell him."

Fenris felt the defensive harsh tone leaking back into his voice, like water through a dam. "It won't matter! It won't--he won't--"

"He's not dead, Fenris." Solas reached out and gently pried Fenris' fingers open; placed the herb stalks on his palm. He closed his hand around Fenris' own, holding them there, meeting his gaze with a simple enough smile below and that echoing, fathomless loss above, in his eyes. "If he ever comes back, you will want to have told him."

Solas was halfway down the path back to the main road before Fenris, transfixed, shook himself into answering.

"What do you mean if he comes back?" he shouted after the retreating form of the elf. "He's _Tranquil,_ not off on a journey!"

Solas turned. So far away, Fenris could not make out his expression. "Nothing is written in stone," he called back.

Then he was gone, and Fenris was left standing in the snow, clutching a handful of elfroot, kindling a tiny ember of hope and more fearful of it than he was of any mage, any wolf, any hole in the sky.


	8. Chapter 8

Fenris brought the elfroot to the herbalist's hut, because it seemed foolish to simply toss carefully-gathered healing herbs aside in the middle of a war. That was what he told himself. He saw no sign of Solas on the road back--it was as if the man had disappeared. Remembering his manifestation and subsequent vanishing during the teeth of a snowstorm, Fenris thought that wasn't so unlikely.

Anders, too, was absent when Fenris arrived at the ornery herbalist's hut. "Haven't seen him since this morning," he grumbled, and grumbled more when Fenris dumped the cluster of elfroot unceremoniously onto a table and bolted out the door. 

He hadn't come? How could he not have come? How could he have lied about where he was going? Tranquil weren't capable of subterfuge, as far as Fenris knew. They were supposed to be utterly practical, incapable of machination. So how could Anders have told Fenris that he was going somewhere he didn't, unless--

He smelled the blood before his eyes adjusted to the sudden dimness inside the cabin they shared. He let loose an oath in Teven, and in his haste almost decapitated himself on his own sword where he had left it propped against the wall.

"Anders? Anders!" 

"I am right here, Fenris." The voice that answered him still echoed with hollowness, devoid of feeling, but it was also mangled somehow, as though the man were eating something.

"Anders, why weren't you--oh _kaffas!"_

Fenris saw him then, luridly lit in patches of orange and splotchy shadow doled out by the flickering candlelight and what little natural illumination made its way in under the oilskin flaps over the windows. The mage did indeed have something in his mouth--a rag, pressed up against a split lip that had bled copiously onto the cloth before staunching. The mate sported a black eye, too, or what was swiftly becoming one--it was already swollen shut. Whatever had struck him there had had a long reach; a large bruise that broke the surface of the skin along its length stretched from the corner of his left eye out, over his cheekbone and disappearing by his left ear. The mage seemed to be having difficulty attending to all his wounds at once; he clutched the rag to his mouth with one hand but was still fumbling with a bottle of ointment with the other.

"Give me that!" Fenris growled, snatching the bottle way from Anders and removing its cork. "Where does this go?"

Anders held out a clean rag--what would have to pass for one, anyway--and Fenris shook the viscous contents of the bottle out onto it. Anders tried to hold it to his eye, but the cloth at his mouth as piled up too high and kept getting in the way. Hissing wordlessly, Fenris grabbed the treated rag out of Anders' hands, rolled it into a tidier ball and pressed it along the bruise, listening to the little hiccup in the mage's breathing as he did so. _He can feel pain,_ he realized.

"Who did this?" he asked, struggling to keep his voice even.

"Templars," Anders answered. He could have been commenting on the weather.

"What do you mean, templars? Where, which ones? Did you report it?"

"I do not know their names. They found me in between houses. There was a wagon overturned in the road so I circled around the tavern." He swallowed as Fenris accidentally pressed harder with the rag. "I did not report it."

"Why not?"

"The reason Cassandra was obtained to perform my rite was discretion. Reporting my injury would undo the efforts toward that."

"But clearly it didn't help if people are attacking you in the streets!" Fenris wrapped his wrath around him like a cape; it kept him from having to acknowledge other emotions. "Did they know you were here--did they know you had been made Tranquil?"

With his free hand Anders reached up gingerly and touched the brand on his forehead, looking up at Fenris with those expressionless eyes. "I expect they know, yes."

"Then why did--look, you need to report this."

Anders had kept his fingers at his forehead, though, and he tapped the brand again. "This doesn't erase anything to them, Fenris. For me it does, but not for them. I'm still the person who blew up the Kirkwall Chantry."

_No, that man is dead, and I'm looking at his corpse,_ Fenris allowed himself to think before furiously chasing the thought away. "That's no excuse," he growled.

"Fenris," Anders said, and lowered his hand from his forehead, resting it on-- _Maker's bloody breath!_ \--Fenris' lap.

"W-what are you doing?"

"You are upset," Anders said, words slightly muffled through the rag at his mouth. he began to tug slowly, systematically at the laces on Fenris' breeches, and the elf nearly tumbled off the table where he'd sat.

"What are you _doing?"_

"I told you, you're upset," Anders replied. Steady, even. Lifeless.

_He's not dead,_ rang Solas' words in Fenris' head. But whatever life could be said to remain to the mage, it wasn't enough to warrant this.

"No, no, no!" Fenris leaped away as if burned, when Anders reached toward him again. A torrent of feelings coursed through the elf as he shoved a hand through his white hair. Fear, disgust, yes, but also, inescapably, longing. "Do you do this to everyone who you decide is upset? What's wrong with you!"

Anders looked at him with that placid gaze--out of the one eye that wasn't swollen shut, anyway. "I do not do this to everyone, no," he said. "Only those who would respond well to it.

Fenris spluttered. "Why would you think that I--how could you think that?"

"It is plain to see. Perhaps it is easier now for me than for you, because of my condition. But it does not take much observation to observe the obvious."

"All this time? You knew--you thought you knew this--all this time?"

Anders nodded, battered face calm under the rag he held against it.

"But you--you let me--even though you--" Fenris swallowed. "You had me fight to make you _Tranquil,_ Anders!" 

"I wanted it."

"You said you trusted me to kill you if it went wrong."

"You would have done so, would you not?"

Fenris was backing toward the door, slowly, feeling horror and shame lapping around his feet like floodwaters, ever- rising. 

"You wouldn't feel anything?" he asked. He hated himself for it, but he asked.

"I do not understand the question."

"Nevermind. Just nevermind. I have to--I have to go." 

He stumbled into the sunlight, then, for the second time that day. And, as before, he began to run. Not to the tents or the tavern, nor even down the road--he ran straight into the woods, thinly-clad feet light on the snow, leaving next to no footprints. Like a ghost. _The ghost I should be, for letting_ that _happen to a man who...who..._ But he could not finish the thought. He ran haphazardly, clumsily, like the child he felt himself to be and to have been all his life: always beholden to someone else, always under someone's sway, even by living; even after the soul of the person whom he owed had been torn from its body. Rendered mute. Leaving only a husk to whom Fenris found himself owing his lust, his life, his learning everything. Too slow, though. Always too slow, the last to know anything about himself. 

Always too late.

*****

The Boeric Ocean stretched glittering before him, spread wide (not long) like memory, like time itself. Fenris inhaled until he felt his lungs would burst with it: the sea, the vault of the sky over it, and behind him the twitter of birds and jungle shrieks signalling squabbling monkeys high in the treetops. Here by the sea, he could neither smell the smoke nor hear the cannons of the qunari, and he was content. 

"I wouldn't have marked you for one given to landscapes," Solas said at his elbow, filling his eyes with the breadth of it: air, sunlight, sea, space. "But it is a beautiful place."

Fenris nodded. "It is. But..." He frowned, turning to the bald apostate at his side, clad in his simple woolens as always. "You should be too warm," he said, because he could not think what else could be troubling him. Surely that was it.

Solas smiled. "I can adjust to a great many things." He turned again to the sea. "Is this the sea over which you escaped?"

Fenris shook his head. "I could have. I should have, but I didn't." He gestured. "This is Boeric Ocean, though, and beyond those islands to the east there, the Amaranthine Sea--I don't know if anyone has ever escaped over it to anything but a quick death on open water."

"There are crueler fates," Solas replied. After a moment's staring across te waters, he picked up the thread of conversation again. "Why here, then? Why this place?"

"Why...this place?"

"What meaning does it hold for you? Why would you come here?"

Fenris looked down at himself, in his linens and leather, dyed to match the forest floor, his tattoos visible through the layers of fabric here and there, glowing faintly. He wasn't sure he had been wearing this a minute ago.

"I...would right this, if I could..." He trailed off. Something was wrong about this, something...muddled. The fog warriors--the people who had given him these clothes, cut him free of his bonds, fed him, taught him--they were gone. There was nothing to right anymore. "But I can't," he finished uncertainly.

"That, I understand." Solas had turned away from the sea now and was regarding him curiously. "Is there much you would right? Your youth--would you have unwritten it, if you could?"

"Not unwritten." Fenris felt his jaw clench; that old familiar ache. "Nothing is written of us. Writing implies a history, something someone cared to preserve." His hands rubbed the places on his wrists where his cuffs used to be. Shining, expensive, the vanity of a proud master. "We had nothing. We weren't even taught how to read."

"Writing doesn't guarantee truth," Solas whispered. "Only the preservation of some warped version of it. Preservation alone promises nothing."

"You speak as if you have been wronged."

"Or as one who did the wronging."

Fenris stared hard at the elf, trying to place him. There was something important, something attached to the oddness here. But he couldn't think what. 

In the absence of that, and on impulse, he reached out and touched the elf's arm, lightly, where it bent from upper to lower. The soft flesh at the point of transition, sheltered by the rocky precipice of bone and sinew that composed the elbow. 

Solas jumped, startled from his contemplation of the sea. 

"Were you a slave?" Fenris asked softly.

Solas' eyes widened, and then he smiled. "No. No, I was many things, but never that." He looked down at Fenris' hand, still perched on his arm. "What gave you cause to think that?"

Fenris spoke without thinking--thinking, filtering, had become a task too great for him here. Too unnecessary. "Some of us blame ourselves for things we cannot help." He felt Solas' eyes on him and they troubled him, so he looked to the sea instead. "Things we were made to do. By our masters, yes, but also by their friends, strangers--anyone. We are at their mercy and yet we never forgive ourselves for the things we do to survive." Before them, the sea glittered, a thousand pinpricks of light offering glimpses of a better world. "I thought you might...know. Some of that. From the way you spoke I thought--"

His reflexes were slow, here, or he would have heard the rustle of cloth; felt the movement of tiny currents of air that heralded a change in his surroundings. As it was, he felt nothing until the bloom of warmth on his neck, just beneath his ear, lips burying themselves in his flesh. He tilted his sideways, turning it into a nuzzle, hearing the exhalation of breath right at his ear as a roar. 

"You speak," Solas murmured into his neck, in a voice made haggard somehow, "with such wisdom, for one so young."

Fenris chuffed a laugh. "I am not that young."

"You are to me. And without your anger..." Solas drew back, then, removing all touch, all warmth, and Fenris made to seek its return, to move toward him. But Solas raised his hands, keeping him at a distance.

"Forgive me, if you can," he said. The sea and the sun that never seemed to quite set backlit him; made him into a series of shapes. Fenris struggled to read his expression, hooded as it was by shadow. "I brought you here to know why you do what you do and...I go about my work disingenuously."

Fenris squinted into the perma-sunset, trying to read a gaze, a face unseen. Certainly there was something odd about this elf whose name he knew, but there was something odd about the whole place--what was disingenuous about it?

"I see nothing you have done wrong," Fenris hazarded, and though he could not see Solas' face, he did not need to see his expression to know that the laugh that followed pained him.

"So you don't. But you're not quite sure what all this is, are you? Or who I am." 

"I..." Fenris stopped. He knew who the elf was, certainly. Solas. What else was there to know?

"I am being unfair. I have walked here through ages unseen, and you are a stranger to these ways. Here." He reached out a hand toward Fenris' forehead, and the latter closed his eyes, expecting some sort of benediction. "Know yourself, and your surroundings."

Pain blossomed in Fenris' forehead, and with it came awareness: Seheron, the Fog Warriors, the Inquisition, this elf. Solas! What had he done to him?"

"This is the Fade," Solas said, stepping back, letting shadow relinquish his face to the harsh full light of the sun. "You are dreaming." 

Suspicion clouded Fenris' features. "How did I get here?"

"I did not force you, if that is what you mean. Probably those," Solas gestured to the lyrium tattoos winding their way around Fenris' arm, "have given you a stronger presence in the Fade than is usual. Do you tend to have dreams more...vivid than seems normal?"

Fenris did not answer. He glared at the elf, bringing a hand up to touch--delicately, as though it were a kettle aboil--the spot on his neck where Solas had--kissed him? Did that count as a kiss?

Solas saw, and his erudite mask faltered a little. "I am sorry," he repeated gravely.

Fenris struggled to piece together their exchange; it made so much sense at the time, but now... "You brought me here for this?"

"No, not at all. I didn't bring you, I found you." Solas closed his eyes, shook his head as if to clear it. "It was a moment of weakness. Forgive me."

Fenris watched him. The sky above was Seheron's, the sea, his. The sun aglitter upon it, warm and inviting, the balm of so many nights of unexpected freedom, catching glimpses of it through the trees with his one-time companions. How could this bear any resemblance to the place that spawned demons that tempted mages into becoming abominations?

"This place...it isn't real," he said. It was not a question.

"We are not here in the flesh," Solas replied. 

"But you...did something to me..."

"A simple trick, if not an honorable one." Solas grimaced. "I made it...more difficult...for you to find your anger here. That is all."

Fenris' voice was flat, unyielding. "It seems a great deal."

"For one so reliant upon his anger, yes. It was."

"You said you were like me, once."

Solas regarded him sharply. "I did."

"But you weren't a slave."

"I was not."

"Can I ask you something?"

"You may."

"Can you reverse Tranquility?"

A smile lit Solas' face then, startling in its radiance. "Ah," was all Solas said, though. "You ask that."

"Well, can you do it?"

"I cannot," Solas replied, still with that sudden smile on his face. Like tumbling out of a gray storm into a scintillating dawn. "But I am heartened to hear you ask it. There may yet be a way."

Fenris fingered the spot on his neck, under his ear, deciding something. "He tried to...comfort me. Today. It is why I...ran."

Solas nodded. "I assumed something had happened between you. I found him bleeding, wandering the woods, looking for you."

Fenris bit his lip. "He can't...feel anything, can he?"

Solas shook his head.

"Then why did he..."

"It must have seemed logical to him at the time." Solas turned away from the sea and the sky, toward the jungle and the birds and the cavorting life there. "They are infinitely logical, the Tranquil. It is their curse--one among many." He walked toward the woods, and after a moment Fenris followed. 

"When you said you used to be like me, you--" he began, and faltered when Solas stopped to listen. "You---you didn't just mean the anger, did you?"

Solas looked at him for a moment. "Guilt never goes away."

"Yet you wish mine to do so." Fenris had caught hold of something and would not let go. "That's why you wanted to find out about me. 'Why I do what I do.' You wanted to see yourself, to--"

"Enough!"

Fenris blinked. He had not sensed anger in the mage; it struck him like a slap.

"What would you have me do?" Solas asked, much quieter now thought with a voice still strung tight as a bowstring. "Congratulations, you read me correctly. I wish to see what I feel avoided--even reversed--in another. What would you have me do?"

Fenris stepped forward; felt the other elf tense.

"Take this memory from me," he whispered. "You robbed me of myself; you can rob me of this. Let me not recall it when I wake. But first--" He leaned in, now, and felt the apprehension in Solas as a palpable, vibrant thing. A veil that would wind into a cord and flick him away if he said the wrong words. _"Save my life, and tell me I am not yours."_

Fenris crashed their teeth together then, savagely, and he heard shock in Solas' intake of breath, that quick little gulp, but also need--the need of a man who is drowning and has condemned himself to do so. Feels it is just. _Air, then,_ thought Fenris. _Breathe, take it all, from my lips. For you seek to help me for a moment of my grace._

And he found he could give that. For once. And it tasted like salt and sun and the seas of dreams.


	9. Chapter 9

When Fenris stumbled back into Haven that evening, his head afire and strangely groggy after so much sleep, the camp was on fire with the news of it. The Herald and her companions had returned, and behind them, in straggling numbers, came...mages. 

"Wonderful," Fenris seethed when a passing stableboy, pelting toward the front gate to see the new arrivals, shouted the news back over his shoulder. _The mages are coming, the mages are coming! Just what we need,_ Fenris thought, adjusting his breeches discretely behind a stack of creates. He must have had some dream, in his exhausted nap in the woods, to leave him in such a state. As though he were a teenager again. _Foolishness._

The village was largely deserted by this point, as everyone ran to hear the news--and to see the robed newcomers trickling in, their feathered pauldrons and travel-stained robes. Fenris was happy for the distraction of the village, at least--it made it easier to stick near shadows as he made his way back to his hut, trying to hide any staining.

"You're back."

Anders stood by the fire, his face bandaged elaborately as he stirred something that smelled of herbs and meat.

Abruptly Fenris realized he was ravenous, and his stomach announced this for him.

"Rabbit," said Anders, continuing to stir. "I was looking for you but I found Solas instead. He told me to go back. He said it was not safe for me, and that he would find you. I picked up these rabbits from a trapper on the way back. He said I looked like I needed them more than he did." Stir, stir, stir. "I apologize for causing you to leave."

Fenris pinched the bridge of his nose. His headache wasn't going anywhere, it seemed. "You didn't...just drop it, Anders," he sighed.

"I will not try to do that again," The Tranquil added in that dead, steady voice. 

"Fine." 

Fenris sank into a rickety chair by the door, amply shielded by shadow. He really ought to find a spare pair of breeches soon. His muscles seemed likely to protest, though, if he did not provide them with some sustenance, and soon.

As if in response to a summons, Anders appeared at his side holding as teaming bowl of stew with a little whittled wooden spoon poking out of it. Fenris had wolfed half of it down before the oddness of the situation struck him.

"Why are you cooking for me?"

Anders held his own spoon awkwardly to his injured mouth, blowing on it as best he could. "I was hungry. You were too," he replied, as though it were only logical.

"No, no, I mean--why are you here with me? Why do you sleep here, isn't there somewhere the--" _Somewhere the Tranquil go?_ he thought, but could not quite bring himself to voice aloud.

"Do you wish me to leave?"

"That's not what I said!" Fenris' spoon clattered into his bowl. "I mean I don't understand why you remain here when I--when you have reason to be elsewhere."

"I remember that you tried to kill me, Fenris, if that is what concerns you." So calm, so polite. "I do not expect it will be a repeat occurrence, so I remain. If you would rather I not--"

"No." Fenris slurped the rest of his stew straight from the bowl, then met Anders' blank expression over its rim. "I...tell me about the color green."

"I do not understand your line of thought, but green is the color of plants, primarily--"

"How does it make you _feel?"_

Anders blinked. "You know I feel nothing, Fenris."

"But you did once. Back in the woods, on the way to--look, you saw a tree. It was burned. But there was a new tree growing out of it, a tiny green shoot. Do you remember?"

"Yes. We talked about it at the time."

"And do you not...feel...anything?"

"I remember how I felt," Anders said, carefully holding the spoon to his lips, trying not to wet the bandages on one side. "But it is a memory, nothing more."

Fenris clamped his lips shut against any more wasted breath. His head pounded. Across the table, Anders gasped a little as the spoon went too far--with one eye bandaged shut, he had no depth perception--and sloshed hot liquid into his split lip."

"Damn it," Fenris hissed, rising to his feet and circling round the table. "Give me that." He snatched the spoon from the ex-mage and filled it with stew, holding it carefully on the right side of Anders' mouth. "Sip," he commanded, and Anders did as he was told.

"Thank you, Fenris."

Fenris filled the spoon again, and tried not to feel the words like a slap to the face.

*****

The moon had long since set when a sudden tumult sent Fenris crashing into consciousness, clad only in his skin and phasing across the room to his sword in a heartbeat.

In the doorway, luridly lit by a torch held high enough to shine on the naked elf, Varric tried his best not to laugh.

"You, ah...might catch your death out here, Broody, if you go out like that."

Blinking back sleep, Fenris found that his face settled easily into the scathing glare he sought. "Why would I go anywhere? What are you doing, pounding down my door in the middle of the night?"

"It's time to celebrate!" the dwarf cackled, thrusting a bottle of wine forward. A bottle which Fenris declined, in favor of yanking on breeches still uncomfortable damp from their washing. "While you were snoring away down here, _we_ closed the Breach!"

"What? When? How?"

He looked over the top of Varric's head, then, and saw that it was true. The sky still faded to that sickly yellow green color, but hulking bits of rock no longer swirled out of what many had taken to be a vortex that ruptured into the Fade itself.

Many, indeed: for now that the adrenaline coursing through his veins had lessened somewhat, Fenris could hear sounds of revelry all around: tin campaign mugs clinking, fiddles sawing, the entire village and the camp surrounding it alive with laughter and celebration.

Varric hoisted the bottle of wine up toward him again. "Come on, Broody. Lighten up a little. It's not your vintage of choice, but I figured the cessation of impending doom might improve it substantially, even for a jaded palate like yours."

Reluctantly, Fenris took the bottle, setting his sword back against the wall by the door. He looked from the sky--what had been the hole in the sky--back to the darkness of the hut. 

"I will remain," came Anders' voice from the shadows, thick with sleep and muffled by his bandage.

Fenris saw Varric's smile slip.

"Is he all right?"

"Just tired," Fenris said, not wanting to go into the details of Anders' run-in with the templars now. If he were honest it was because he wanted to conduct that particular witch hunt himself--and to deal with the offenders as he saw fit. Outside the influence of Varric's moral code.

But Fenris was too groggy to be honest with himself, and stumbled out into the night after Varric with the bottle, hastily pulling a woolen shirt on as much to ward off the chill as to minimize the glow of the campfires over the tattoos that laced his body. Drinking he could do; celebratory debauchery was not something he felt up to at the moment.

"This way!" Varric cried, trying to recover the mood the reminder of Anders' Tranquility had dampened.

As they waded through the throng, Fenris quickly discovered that the ruckus that startled him awake hadn't begun with Varric at all--it had been revelers seeking wood for bonfires, crates for leaping atop and corners for kissing. Towed along by Varric, he saw people dancing-- _dancing,_ here at what had been, as far as anyone knew, the end of the world, not a day ago! They cavorted arm-in-arm in jigs and quadrilles from Orlais and Ferelden, and even some belly-dancing of the type Fenris knew to derive from climates much further north. Chantry sister spun on the arm of blacksmith, mage caught templar at the turn of a reel, and laughter and merriment fizzed throughout the camp like bubbles in a mug of cider.

All of it made Fenris feel slightly...out of place. He uncorked the wine bottle readily enough, when Varric had led him to a rise in the eastern part of town, from which they could observe the festivities. But by the time they got there he had already turned down three dance partners and two bawdier proposals, and he wasn't sure how much celebratory spirit he would be capable of lending to the party. Varric seemed to sense his mood, and didn't press him for talk, passing the bottle companionably back and forth until a pleasant warmth had coated Fenris' stomach.

"You never said how it went, in Redcliffe," the elf said.

Even in the dim light cast up by the fires below, he saw Varric's grimace.

"Bad. It went bad."

Fenris handed the bottle back. "You don't need to discuss it, if--"

"They went forward in time, Broody. The Herald and this mage--Dorian. They said they saw us--me--in the future. A year from now. We had--lost. Red lyrium everywhere." He took a long swig from the bottle and for a moment all they could hear, above the murmur of the crowds, was its sloshing. "If we hadn't done that tonight," he said, nodding toward the greenish patch of sky where the Breach had once hovered, spinning nefarious and bright on its invisible axis, "there might not have been a tomorrow. At least," he added, wiping his mouth, "not one you'd want to see."

"I see," murmured Fenris, though he did not see at all. Time travel? Red lyrium? Perhaps the dwarf had gone through a bottle or two already.

"I second that sentiment," said a figure emerging around the corner of the nearest cabin. Solas. He carried with him a bottle, not yet open, and his steps were unhurried, his posture at ease as though he did not feel the chill. He held ou hte bottle, and Fenris accepted.

"You've spoken to the Herald, then?" Varric asked.

Solas shook his head. "To the Tevinter mage, actually. Dorian. He is remarkably learned on a number of matters, though I admit the tales of time travel stretch the limits of the imagination." 

"You didn't mention this mage was Tevinter," Fenris growled.

Shrugging, Varric finished the last of the bottle and reached for the new one Solas had brought. "He's not exactly invading Orlais, is he? His own former teacher was the one who...did what he did at Redcliffe. Without Dorian's help the Herald never would have made it back in time."

"How convenient."

"Consider the cost to him, seeing what had become of a man had once respected, and acting on it." Solas' words were calm, speculative, but they cut Fenris like knives. "Do not be so hasty to judge."

"It is not haste when one has spent a lifetime as the slave of a Tevinter magister."

Solas tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the bottle Varric handed him. "Not a lifetime," he said, tossing his head back and letting the wine flow in. "You are still alive, after all, and free." He held the bottle out. An offering, an apology of sorts for the damage his words did.

"But at what cost," Fenris muttered, and turned away from the bottle and faces, toward the distant peaks, blessedly silent in their faintly starlit cloaks of snow.

Except...not only stars lit them, now.

"We are invaded!" Fenris shouted, even as warning horns began to blow and laughter turned to panicked cries. Beside him, Varric swore, and before him, a little door closed in Solas' face: a possibility ended, for the time being. Then they began to run, as did the rest of the camp. Where there had been levity and joy, the furious release of tension after weeks of worry, there was now despair. For the fires of the army advancing down the valley were as insects at the end of summer: beautiful, multitudinous, and harbingers of darker times to come.

It was habit. Fenris wanted to know what was going on, what decisions were being made--and for that he followed Varric and Solas in their mad dash through the panicked camp followers, toward the end of town where the Herald and her advisers had, hopefully, a plan. 

Such a hope was, at least initially, ill-founded, as the Herald and Cullen pelted past them head the other way, toward the gates. Without a word the group pivoted to follow, the cold air burning in Fenris' lungs, the not-insubstantial amount of wine he'd just quaffed seeping through his veins like syrup, making everything seem to slow. Details washed up on his consciousness like driftwood upon a shore: the tears on the face of a women clutching a pan to her chest in defense or offense or both, the way the commander's fur ruff seemed to bristle into spikes as he ran; the crackle of a bonfire abandoned as it consumed whole the roast rabbit forgotten atop it.

It was in such a state of mind that he skidded to a halt at the gates, gasping for air and a sobriety he had yet to attain, as the gates swung open in response to a frantic yell from outside. A too-pale boy in a massive leather hat tumbled in, after removing his knives from the back of a hulking brute of an enemy soldier, babbling about red templars and the Herald stealing mages and something about an "elder one."

Then Cullen raised his sword and called for everything they had, and Fenris felt the tug--even through the fog brought on by the wine--of need, of vulnerability that he could try and be a sword for--all these people, so merry minutes ago!--as well as he was able. And the gates opened wider, and paltry Inquisition forces rushed out to meet the lights on the hill in their vast numbers, and adrenaline took over. Fire and light burned amid patches of the crisp starry night that they had left behind them like an earlier part of life; like childhood.

Fenris fought with Varric and Solas and the Herald initially, because they had all been down by the gates together and that was where the templars began to appear, bristling with red lyrium in a way Fenris hadn't seen since Commander Meredith--in a way he hadn't hoped ever to see again. Cullen was right, though. Haven was no fortress, and their forces began to give ground. Tier by tier of the terraced village, skirmish by skirmish--for even upon landing the killing blow on a foe, one had to take a step back; ready one's weapon as the next group came charging in over the bodies of their brethren--the Inquisition lost its foothold.

Eventually, with two trebuchets wrested from enemy control and firing into the advancing hordes, the smell of smoke penetrated the battle miasma that held Fenris in a tense, unthinking readiness. He sniffed once, twice, and his eyes told him what his nose already knew: the village itself now burned. He watched the flames lick their way up the edge of a collapsed building for a moment, distantly curious as to why he was registering such details, when it hit him.

_Anders._

With an oath, Fenris spun to the south and phased forward, right through Solas, and the bottom seemed to drop out of his stomach. When he solidified again he crashed to his knees, dizzy and weak, the stars seeming to cartwheel madly above him, laughing at the idea of him saving anyone, even himself. Confusion rode waves of nausea. _What just happened?_

"Get up," Solas barked, hauling him to his feet.

"I--"

"Forget it. Run. I will be right behind you."

Fenris did, and Solas was. They tore fleet-footed through the town on fire, screams following them like carols from the Fade. It was not far to the hut Fenris shared with Anders, but with templars thronging and buildings going up in torrents of smoke and sparks, they could not go the usual way. This cost time. Fenris was gasping for air and phasing when he felt he had enough--he had to hold his breath, when he didn't, for there was no air in the in-between place he briefly entered--while his blade struck and struck again, hacking through templars like the harvest, all thought of the Inquisition and of the greater battle driven from his head.

Their house burned. 

"Fenris! Wait until--" Solas shouted, but from a greater distance than Fenris was able to hear or care about. The warrior phased, leaping forward from the rubble they'd just rounded to the house itself, its roof alight and half caved-in across the doorway. Fenris' lungs erupted into coughs as soon as he solidified inside; smoke clawed at his throat and his nose, clogging his attempts to bellow Anders' name. His bed was afire, the table at which they'd supped stew smashed to splinters by a fallen beam, and Fenris jabbed his knuckles into his eyes, trying to scrub the burning away, trying to _see._

"Anders!" he roared, stumbling forward with an arm raised against he blast from the flames all around. His foot struck something and he keeled over, landing awkwardly, scrabbling for his sword. 

Instead his hand closed over the unmoving shoulder of Anders, who lay pile don the floor like a mound of dirty laundry, as the flames lit the room around them a perversely jovial orange. 

"Mage! _Mage!"_ Fenris howled directly into the man's face, shaking him like prison bars. No answer. Cursing, Fenris rolled to his feet and bent to hoist the man over his shoulder, only to discover that he couldn't: the part of the ceiling that still remained hung too low, heavy with flame and incipient collapse. He stood there hacking, willing air into his lungs to phase, fumbling to get some sort of purchase on Anders, to tug him along after him as he shifted. He had never tried such a thing and had no idea if it would work, but their options were precious few, and he would not leave the body-- _not a body!_ \--to the fires.

With a shriek a cold wind attacked him, driving him to his knees with stinging snowflakes and the teeth of winter, and he flung himself over Anders, jaw clenched against the numbing cold. Outdone by the blast, the fires around him guttered out even as snow crusted the beams that had been burning, and the light dimmed to the pale, frigid blue of a dark night.

"Fenris!"

The shout came from beyond the narrow cone of cold and fear that Fenris' world had shrunk to, and he opened his mouth to respond but could only croak. _So, so cold._

"Fenris, is he in there?"

Close, now, the voice, and with great effort Fenris craned his frozen neck and coul dhear the creak and groan of debris, and see a bald head appear above the wreakage of the front half of the house.

Solas hissed something Fenris could not understand. "I'm sorry--the flames were too great, and I could not see you. I will get you out!"

Fenris watched but did not register beams rising like twigs in a wind: into the air and away. He heard but did not take in the crunch of instant frost beneath elven feet: the thunk of a staff punching through a top layer of snow. He felt hands grip him on either side and tug him upright, and at this he remembered language.

"He's dead," he croaked.

"He is not. Get up."

"I came as fast as I--"

"Fenris." Solas' pale face and too-serious eyes filled his vision, sucking up char and smoke and fires and sky. "He is not dead. But we all will be if we do not return to our soldiers. They are losing the town, and us with it."

Fenris blinked, and looked up to the cold, clear sky with its map of stars. "No...storm?"

Solas shook his head. "No. That was me. Come." He bent to the still-unmoving form of Anders, mostly untouched by frost thanks to Fenris' covering him with his body. "Help me with him."

Moving a deadweight was no easy task--less so when struggling not to get killed while doing it. With an old man's movements, crippled by cold, Fenris found his sword and helped drag Anders free from the wreckage of the cabin. Once free, Solas gestured, and Anders began to float as the beams had, hovering a span above the ground, singed robes fluttering in the breeze.

"I can move him like this, but I cannot fight at the same time. You'll need to clear us a path."

Fenris did. He came closer to failing than he would have thought possible, when hale and healthy, but his body had catapulted through drunkenness to battle fervor to smoke inhalation and then to near-frostite in less than an hour, and he felt it in every step. Barely did he manage to bring his blade up in time, to counter blows and slice open unguarded sides. But he did, and they advanced through the burning remains of the Inquisition's birthplace, and after what seemed like a lifetime of stumbling and striking and ragged breathing, they were within a pocket of warmth again. Panicked faces everywhere, the hurrying of frantic feet like a sewer-full of rats echoing around them, but _warm._

Fenris had never been so grateful for warmth in his life.

"No, he is not," Solas replied, in answer to a question Fenris had not heard. "He yet lives."

"If that's true he'd better make a quick job of showing it. Herald says we are to leave, all of us." A pause. "All who can, anyway. There's a passage."

Fenris felt more than saw Anders float to the smooth red stones next to him. Felt Solas' approach, too--the three-pronged tread of his feet and his staff, leaned upon now perhaps a touch more heavily?--and his kneeling, quite close.

"He is dead," Fenris repeated. 

Solas shot him a stern look. "He is not, and your guilt will not make it so. Give me a moment." He laid his staff down and fanned his hands out over Anders' chest, eyes closed. He frowned intensely for second, then seemed to wobble where he knelt, eyes flashing open.

"I require assistance. I am somewhat...fatigued."

Fenris looked around for a mage, but Solas took his arm. "No. You will do. May I draw upon you?"

"What?"

"I will not hurt you. But healing him requires more than I can offer right now." He lifted Fenris' hand, so the torchlight flickered along his lyrium brands. "May I?"

Fenris was uncertain, but Anders was his responsibility. He saw green fire in his mind's eye-- _I should have died_ \--and nodded.

"Go head."

Solas kept hold of Fenris with his left hand and held his right out over Anders, a crease blooming between his eyebrows as he concentrated. The hairs on teh back of Fenris' neck stood on end as he felt the elf pull of magic through him. He was a channel, a road with carts hurtling down it, and it felt like...losing control. But he held still, and held his tongue, and watched a soft blue light spring into existence around each of Solas' fingers and sink into the chest of the fallen Tranquil. One, two, three long moments passed, where Fenris felt a terrible itch inside his veins, magic moving through him willing it to be so. _Save my life and tell me I am not yours._

Then Anders coughed, a great hacking cough that made him double up like a caterpillar, and Solas dropped Fenris' hand as the itch faded.

"You must leave at once," the mage said, gesturing to the flow of people hurrying toward the back of the building.

Fenris stumbled to his feet, tugging Anders up after him. "We must..." He wavered on his feet. "Not you?"

"My place is here." Solas turned back to the front gates, where the sounds of battle grew louder every moment. "Go."

"Can you walk?" Fenris mumbled, and Anders nodded, if unsteadily. The two of them tottered a few steps down the hall before Fenris paused and looked back. 

"Thank you," he called. But Solas was already gone.


	10. Chapter 10

In the intricacies of Skyhold--courtyards, stables, tavern, balconies, battlements, and all the secret cloistered places in between--everyone had a place.

Everyone except Fenris. 

Anders had found an unexpected home with the self-proclaimed surgeon, first as her patient and then as her assistant. A brisk, precise individual, she had neither the time nor patience to put up with scruples about Tranquils' personalities--or lack thereof. Anders kept out of sight as much as possible, owing to the general unlikelihood of good reception were he to become widely recognized, but he still managed to make himself "useful"--high praise from the tight-lipped surgeon. Fenris saw the ex-mage rarely now, and the occasions he did lasted only those few moments it took the surgeon to notice him standing there idle--whereupon he was roundly chased out, to "leave them to their work."

There was so _much_ work to be done, after all. The hulking architectural masterpiece that was Skyhold had perched its mountain peak for centuries, it was true, but such a vigil took a toll on a structure. Fenris had thought that there should then be ample opportunity for him to be of assistance, but the opposite seemed to be true. There were so many tasks to perform, and so many eager people better-suited to those tasks than him, that he found himself wandering about the grounds more often than not, lingering only as long as it took someone to see that he was in the way, and to request--with varying degrees of cordiality--that he move.

He had taken a tower room for himself, though, after seeing what Commander Cullen had done with his own. An eyrie seemed appropriate for his restless gloom. For gloom there was. And even the self-imposed exile of his eyrie could not keep Cole, the young man who'd come running with word of the templar attack, from trying to help.

"It's not your fault. He chose it."

Fenris jerked upright from the beam he'd been leaning over, trying to attach a bit of oilskin. He glared at the pale boy in his huge hat who now perched on another fallen beam across the room.

"Who? What are you talking about, boy?"

"The mage. He's not real now but he chose not to be real. You didn't choose it for him."

Fenris threw the oilskin angrily to the floor. "And what do you know about it?"

"You hurt for him but you don't know why. It's because you always hurt and you don't know how not to. Why would you find yourself guilty for a decision that wasn't yours to make?"

Fenris stared. The strange boy _did_ know. He wanted to toss the boy out; send him rocketing back down the ladder he had somehow managed to ascend soundlessly. But he _knew._ "It...was my choice. I asked for the help. If I hadn't said anything he could have walked free."

"He didn't feel free. He hadn't felt free for years."

"How do you...know that?"

"You don't have to be real to have memories."

"I don't understand."

"Prodding, teasing, always pushing me, making me weep, tow the line of propriety until Denarius notices and then it's me he punishes, not her, even though she was torturing me, jabbing with her wretched magic, making the tears slide down, down--"

"Enough!" Fenris took a step toward the boy and then stopped himself. "Please leave."

"You did not hurt for her. You killed her and did not hurt for her. Why would you hurt for him?"

Fenris felt sweat slick over his upper lip. Hated it. "Those were entirely different people. Now please go!"

"Once they would have been one and the same to you. Now you see they're different. Is that why you hurt?"

"Get out!"

Cole did. He did a backflip off the beam, in fact, into the void that held the ladder--but when Fenris rushed to the opening in the floor in horror, there was no sign the boy had ever been there.

Fenris shivered, only partly from the numerous holes in his roof. They and their oilskin patches could wait, though. He felt the sudden need to be among people--real people, who could not read his past like a book in his eyes.

Minutes later, he was regretting this decision, or at least amending it. Real people, he told himself, might not, in the future, include Tevinter mages.

"The lyrium-etched warrior, we meet at last!" came a cry from across the library, when Fenris entered from the parapet. In the great circular space the mage's rich voice echoed, announcing to everyone amongst the books and boxes and crates that Fenris was here--which drew far more attention to him than he might have wished.

Fenris suppressed a sigh. He supposed that would echo, too. "I was not aware you were staying," he said instead, feeling the familiar scowl settle onto his face like a second skin.

"How extraordinary! I wasn't aware you were staying either," the mage replied, not missing a beat. He strolled over from a precipitous pile of books and gave a flourishing bow. "Dorian, of House Pavus, most recently of Minrathous. At your service."

Fenris sneered. "Fenris. Former slave, also of Minrathous. Not really at yours." His little jab was rewarded with a brief faltering of that rogueish smile.

"I won't turn you in if you won't turn me in," Dorian said gaily. "Not very popular back home, I'm afraid."

"I rather doubt they'll hunt you down and collar you."

"Oh, give my father time. I wouldn't put it past him." Dorian eyed him a moment. "There. Now that we've got that bit of unpleasantness out of the way, I have to ask. Do you play chess?"

Fenris did not. Not well, anyway. But he wanted so much to wipe the grin off this pompous reminder of his former homeland that he agreed to a game--and then a second, and a third, the middle of which he was fairly certain the mage let him win. Dorian quickly caught on to the fact that Fenris was not terribly keen on conversation, and happily filled the silence himself, speaking mainly of the draftiness and general deplorable southernness of Skyhold's architecture, but touching on all of what he appeared to refer to as "the Inquisitor's inner circle" in the process. When he mentioned the elf Solas' attempts at mural painting, Fenris felt the need to respond despite himself.

"Painting? What in the name of the Maker is he doing painting? The world is falling apart and he wants to smear crushed beetles across walls?"

Dorian winced theatrically, coyly pointing backward over the plush of his deep armchair. "Shh. He's right down there, you know. He'll hear you."

Fenris snorted. "As if there are secrets in this place anyway." Dorian gave him a curious look at that, which he chose to ignore. "I've about had it with your games, mage. Especially if you will not play to your full abilities." He stood up and stretched, over Dorian's protests that he had done no such thing. "I will go see these paintings, and make...amends. For any slight I may have caused."

"I promise not to go easy on you next time!" Dorian called after him as he began to descend the curling stairwell. Once again, the heads of all those working away in the room turned toward Fenris, and he swore silently at the Tevinter. Next time, he would beat the posh man, playing as well as if not better than his coddled altus-level upbringing had allowed for.

Below, Solas was indeed painting, kneeling on the cobbled floor to add layers to some flames coming out between stylized mountains. He did not look up as Fenris approached.

"Did you ever sing?"

Fenris blinked, arrested mid-step. "I'm sorry?"

"Did you ever sing." He looked up from his palette, brush poised in the air, paint glistening on its bristles. 

"I...no. When? Alone, or--"

"At any point. Nevermind. It is of no consequence." He turned back to his painting, daubing on a bit more red. "Had you done so, I would have told you to remember that, when you asked me why I was painting. Even when the world is falling apart."

To his shame, Fenris felt his face grow hot. "My intent was not to--I didn't know you were here. That you would...hear."

"As I said, it is of no consequence." Solas continued painting. Red, red, red. Fenris watched, unspeaking, and stood there for so long that the mage turned around, fully this time. "Is there something I can assist you with?"

"Back in Haven. I wondered--when I phased...through you." Fenris hadn't known he was going to say this until he had already begun, and now he was uncertain. "It was different. It isn't usually...like that."

Solas' face remained as studiously attentive as ever, but Fenris thought he saw something flicker there. Just for a moment. "Am I to understand that you make a habit of cutting through people using your...abilities?" His eyes dropped slightly lower, and Fenris knew he was looking at the lyrium markings on his chin.

"No!" he snapped. "Usually I just reach in, to--crush them." He coughed. "But in the middle of a fight, yes, sometimes to keep ahead of the enemy, I phase through people. And it doesn't feel like that, like going through you."

"And how did that feel?"

Fenris felt like he was being led. Like there was a trap he was walking into without quite knowing it was there. "I don't know," he admitted finally. "Like falling off a cliff, or...trying to swim across the sea."

Solas' mouth twitched in a smile. "I was not aware you were so given to poetic pursuits."

Fenris glared at him. "You're bigger then you're supposed to be."

"One would think you were a mage, to hear such talk." 

"But I'm not!" Fenris huffed; tried to reign himself in. He felt a headache coming on the longer he looked at Solas. "I can only do this one thing. What I was made to do. Moving like that, phasing...you see the shapes of people. You _feel_ them, where they begin and end. The space they occupy and the space they do not." He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "You shouldn't fit. You stretch too far."

Solas set the palette and paintbrush down then, delicately, and rose. He was taller than Fenris, and looked down on him from where he stood, quite close, their noses a handspan apart. 

"You made it out the other side, did you not?" the mage asked, face as still as a pond.

"I...yes, but..." Fenris' skull pounded. "It was exhausting."

"I am told I can be tiresome at times."

"That's not what I--"

Solas bent down, and brought his lips to Fenris', swallowing his words and his breath; the essence of him. Fenris held very still, and the heat that rushed to his head rivaled that of the ache that grew worse by the moment. 

"You should rest," Solas said quietly, withdrawing. "I believe your chess games have taxed you."

It almost worked. Fenris almost succumbed to the gentle suggestion, to the pain in his head; to the disorienting haze that seemed to be clouding his thoughts--a pleasant haze, to be sure, but disorienting nonetheless. He took one step back, then another. A retreat within reach.

But halfway to the door he paused, as a jagged spike of stubbornness short through him. Who was he to be sent off to bed by this mage? he had come here for answers--he hadn't known which ones until he asked, it was true, but still, answers were not what he had received. he'd been led around his question, _laughed_ at--however good-naturedly--and then sent off knowing even less, it felt, than when he came in.

His jaw hardened. Ignoring the throbbing between his ears he focused, and felt his brands flicker to life. For the briefest of moments he thought he saw Solas' eyes widen, and even as he phased forward he felt the satisfaction of that. _Caught you off-guard, mage._ Then he was hurtling through the half-world that became the whole world when he did this, colors and depth fading to fire and light, forward. 

Straight at Solas.

*****

The roar of what seemed like every sound he had ever experienced, stripped of its context and boiled down to a single blip in the cacophony of time--filled Fenris' ears. Not just his ears but his chest, his lungs; it vibrated in the soles of his feet, a presence and an absence; a long, linear shout and a swooping spiral, ever returning. There were colors--there should not have been colors--again, but they seemed to shift and change even as he tried to name them. What had seemed like motion seconds ago--minutes ago?--now felt so small as to be indistinguishable from stasis. A raindrop sliding down the side of a building. For he was falling, surely, though he could not tell in which direction--only the sense of inevitability, of utter lack of control, warned him before his near-static slide through the half-world became a plummet, and his heart was in his mouth, his mouth which he opened to scream but there was no air, no air, no air...and then there was no light, either, and he fell through vastnesses unknown.

*****

"You should not have done that."

Fenris cracked an eye open and could not tell, at first, that he had done so--the room he lay in was so dark as to be almost without color. He blinked a few times and made out a table, chairs. A faded scrap of a once-rich rug, illuminated by the dim light licking around the edges of the boarded-up window. His old mansion in Kirkwall.

"Wh-what am I doing here?"

"Your guess is better than mine," replied Solas, rising from the dilapidated bench on which he'd been perched, watching. "This place must have been important to you, or we wouldn't be here. Do you not recognize it?"

Fenris rubbed his head. "No, I do. It's just..." _Haven. Skyhold. Phasing forward, falling, falling--_ "Am I dead?"

"You are dreaming." Solas knelt by the stone-cold fireplace and held a hand out. A tiny flame kindled there, lending the immediate vicinity a light and a warmth that it had lacked a moment ago. "You passed out, after your...experiment." He turned to eye the warrior dubiously, reflected firelight playing along one side of his face. "How much do you recall?"

"Everything. Most of it. I phased forward and fell. Like before only--" Fenris frowned. "Did you do this to me? Chase me into the Fade to keep me from asking questions?"

Solas smiled. "I have many skills, Fenris, but that is not one of them. You are free to ask any questions you wish."

"Whether you'll answer them or not is different, though, isn't it?"

Solas sighed. "You're being deliberately combative. I had hoped...but nevermind. Tell me," he said, striding to one of the boarded-up windows and trailing long fingers along its worn planking, "what is this place? It looks abandoned."

"It was my home. In Kirkwall." Fenris glowered. "And before that it belonged to my former master, whose henchmen I killed before I took it. I waited for him here for years."

Solas cocked his head. "And he never came?"

“He did. Eventually.” 

“You killed him.” 

Fenris nodded. 

“It didn’t end, though, did it?” Solas asked, his usually soft voice softer still. “You thought you had the answer, a way to move on, yet it seeped into your bones, your patterns of thought, and you cannot be free of it.” He paused. “Or could not. For some time.”

“You’ve been talking to Cole.” 

“I have not.” 

“What would you know of it, then?”

Solas rapped on the shutters. “You lived hear how long? Years? And yet you kept it dark, as cluttered and forgotten as when you took it as yours—to the point where it appears as such, even in the Fade.” 

Fenris stood, too, anger compelling him to stand as close with the mage as he could. “And what would you have me do?” he growled.

“Do?” Solas turned to face him, his hands held away from his body, as though he were shrugging, or sighing. Or letting something go. “I would have you live.” 

He let his hands fall to his sides, and as he did, a great number of things began to happen. With a bang, the shutters flew off the windows, turning to motes of dust as they fell—motes made visible by the light now pouring in through the panes. Thick velour curtains tumbled down, a deep rich blue with tiny embroidered leaves in thread-of-gold, while meanwhile the floor began to…shine. In an ever-widening circle, dirt and cobwebs melted into the ether; metal gleamed; wood regained a polish it had forgotten. Even as Fenris watched, tattered cushions grew plush again, silken tassels glimmering in the light of the many candelabras that now held multitudes of crisp white candles in their shining sconces. Like a tide, the changes flowered out the doorway, into the hall, bringing light and life and…music?

Fenris stepped out onto the balcony that looked down onto the mansion’s foyer and saw that it wasn’t just a question of curtains or cleanliness—there were _people,_ dressed in their finest, dancing. Dancing! In creamy hats and masks and watered silk; in boots and slippers and the garb of every land Fenris had ever known—and many totally foreign to him. In a corner, the band played on strange instruments with many parts, and though it was a tune Fenris could not put words to, he was sure he knew it.

He opened his mouth to wonder aloud at the spectacle, and felt a tickling along his chin. Frills of lace spilled from his neck and cuffs, fanning out over the crisp burgundy velvet coat he now found himself wearing, with tight-fitting leggings to match. He spun around—at least his feet were bare and could feel their way through the shock for him—to see Solas leaning in the doorway to the bedroom, arms crossed and strangely at ease in an odd flowing robe composed of more diverging lines than the eye could quite follow. 

“It—it wasn’t like this,” Fenris stammered, nodding at the finery displayed below.

“It could have been,” Solas countered, stepping forward. “If you had let go.”

“I don’t…” Pain flared behind Fenris’ eyes suddenly, scattering his thoughts. Was there something he was supposed to remember? “I don’t understand. What you’re trying to say to me, what you want me to _do.”_ He dug his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and trying to pinch the pain away. 

In a moment, he felt a hand close over his own.

“I want you to avoid the mistakes I made,” Solas whispered, close, tugging Fenris hand away form his face. “You asked me to take this from you, but it is paining you not to remember it. Take it back.”

Fenris felt lips between his eyes, then—right where he had been pressing—and a jumble of memories seemed to sprout there and pour through him, like water. Teeth clacking against each other, fingers intertwined, the test of tea and green things. Sand. The sea. A request to forget.

Fenris reeled back, clutching his head. Solas watched him, unmoving in his gossamer robe that seemed to ripple on its own. “You…we…” Fenris struggled to form words. “You said you took my anger. Did you take it now, too?” A note of suspicion, beneath the shock.

“I only ever made it difficult for you to find your anger. And only the once.” Solas drummed his fingers along the doorframe. “I never took it away.”

Fenris blinked hard, expecting the torrent of color and music assaulting his senses to abate. It did not. “What is all this? Who are all these people?”

“Spirits. Just spirits eager to play a part.” Solas spread his hands. “Can you blame them?”

“Spirits…” Fenris trailed off. “Are they dangerous?”

“No more so than I.”

Fenris glanced sharply at the elf at this. “You have a remarkable amount of control for one who is dreaming,” he said dryly.

“To be fair, I have a remarkable amount of experience.” Solas took a step closer. “Besides. I wanted to see your reaction.”

“To…you?”

“To spirits. To see if time had softened you.”

“Why?”

Solas took another step forward, then seemed to think better of it and turned away. “For your friend’s sake. And for yours.”

“What does this have to do with—“

“Fenris.” Solas leaned on the balustrade, overlooking the party below, voice so quiet as to barely be audible above the music. “Justice—the spirit of justice that you know as Justice—did not fade away. It lives while Anders yet lives. They are separated from each other now, but to restore one is to restore the other. You must know this.”

A cold stone settle din the pit of Fenris’ stomach. To see that demon lurking in Anders’ eyes again, to surge forth at every injustice… _I don’t want to be a weapon anymore._

The lifelessness of Tranquil eyes.

The terror of the demon.

Fenris slammed his eyes shut, willing the weight of the decision away. Willing it all away.

After what seemed like a lifetime, Solas spoke. “As you said—as you’ve seen—he is not without a place, as he is. You have time. Perhaps you should ask him.” Pause. “In the meantime…”

Fenris opened his eyes and saw those long fingers outstretched. Inviting. 

“It would mean nothing,” Solas murmured, eyes like coals and very much suggesting otherwise. “A frivolity. But I would have this dance, if you will it.”

A jumble of emotions, like getting the memories back anew, descended onto Fenris: excitement and dread; anticipation and hesitation. He eyed the hand held out to him. “I…don’t know how,” he said at last.

“Allow me to be your teacher.”

And Fenris did. And the two danced, as in dreams, across gleaming floors that never were, amongst people who never had been, to music that time had long since forgotten, even in its echoes.


	11. Chapter 11

Sand peppered Fenris' face, and he carefully turned downwind before taking another breath. He had learned this the hard way. 

To the south, the earth fell away in undulating waves of shimmering sand streaked with the occasional outcropping. Orange below, blue above--there was no green here. His mind strayed to Anders, and he pushed the thought away. _Not now._

"If not now, when?"

Fenris blinked, startled, glancing to Varric in confusing before reminding himself that the teller of tales was just that--not a reader of minds. The dwarf was squinting grimly into the distance where a dust storm churned, temporarily hiding their sun- and wind-blasted destination: a Tevinter outpost, long abandoned. Or it should have been.

"We wait until Hawk and the Inquisitor say otherwise," Solas sighed, glaring in the same direction as Varric. "If that means slowly baking to death at camp while a madman beseeches us to locate the messy remains of dragon kills..." He grimaced. "So be it."

"It still feels like we are playing second fiddle out here."

"That's because we are," Fenris snapped. "The Inquisitor does not trust me." 

Varric grinned ruefully. "Well, it could be that...but I'm pretty sure I didn't do myself any favors either, keeping the wraps on Hawke as I did."

"You should be grateful the Inquisitor told you to stay here," Solas interrupted dryly. "Had you accompanied them, Cassandra might not have let you leave the desert alive."

"I know." That silenced Varric for a time.

A very brief time.

"So how does it feel, finally being able to cavort through hostile countryside full of monsters trying to kill us again, Fenris? Just like old times?"

"Just like." Fenris felt grit grinding between his teeth. Sand. Always sand.

Varric sighed, flapping the front of his jacket in a futile attempt to promote airflow. "You mean to tell me that after all these years, you still haven't improved your ability to indulge in a little idle conversation with your companions?"

Fenris glowered. It was easy; his first response. "I'm...trying," he admitted gruffly. 

Varric rolled his eyes. "Don't strain yourself on my account, Broody." He turned to Solas. "What about you, Chuckles? Have any dark and gloomy insights into the local spirit wildlife in this desert?"

Solas' stare was as flat as the top of the mesas that rose like teeth around them. "Spirits are not here for your entertainment, Varric." 

"No, but when my alternative is dour elf number one or dour elf number two, I'll take my chances, thanks." He wandered a few feet away, knuckling the small of his back, and returned to his bleak vigil of the Tevinter outpost. Where _was_ the Inquisitor and her group?

Fenris gazed out that way, too, ostensibly with the same concern as Varric. In reality, though, he was grateful for the excuse to seem focused and distant--anywhere but near Solas in this desert quiet, the weight of what had passed between them in the Fade whistling louder than the wind through the sands.

Fenris had no idea how to act around Solas. Not now. He was sure the mage had had something to do with his getting invited along on this venture--it was what he had wanted, after all, a cessation of the useless waiting around in courtyards and towers back in Skyhold--and yet he hadn't thanked the elf, or said more than a terse few words to him since setting out from the Western Approach. Should he behave differently? He did not wish to deal with, or address, the curiosity of the group at large. He had seen enough of that in Kirkwall. Their interest aside, though--how did one hold oneself, after such an exchange? Was there a debt to be paid, above and beyond the one incurred by being brought--however guardedly--into the Inquisitor's inner circle? Were there words to be said?

Fenris sensed where Solas stood in camp, and every move he made therein. Slightly behind and a few paces to the left of him, standing, but shifting his weight every few minutes from one leg to the other. Bored, then--and a little tired. Or did the elf feel such things? Abruptly Fenris recalled Haven-- _May I draw on you?_ \--and supposed that the answer was yes. To both questions.

"It is both a shackle and a strength," Solas murmured, just loudly enough. Anyone would have thought he was talking to himself--but Fenris knew that to be an indulgence. One he would not allow himself.

"What is?" he had to ask.

Solas turned those eyes on him, squinting into the glare of the desert sun, but no less intense for it. "The physical form. Varric asked about the spirits here--that is what they say."

Fenris' gaze swept past their camp. "Physical form--are there demons? he reached for his sword, and Solas laughed softly. 

"No. That's not what I meant. Although..." He gazed toward the outpost. "Something _is_ amiss. I am not certain what."

"We wait, then?"

"Yes. We wait." Solas watched him for a moment--Fenris could feel the eyes on him--before continuing. "You thought there would be less waiting in the field than at Skyhold?"

"I'm not a newcomer to the road. I've done this before."

"Yet you chafe at the delay."

Fenris snorted. "So do you. You're just better at hiding it."

"Fair enough." His tone was mild, but shades of laughter lapped under its surface, just out of sight. "Have you given any more thought to--"

"No," Fenris blurted, as Varric strolled over. "I have not."

"What are you two whispering about?" Varric struck a dashing pose, raising one eyebrow like the rogue he was. _"Elfy_ things, I presume?"

"Clearly," Fenris growled, even as Solas spoke right over him.

"We were discussing Fenris' uncanny ability to put off important decisions until the absolute last minute, at which point he allows the desperation of the deadline to overwhelm him into making an impulsive, poorly thought-out attempt at a solution that will almost undoubtedly cause him regret at a later date."

Both Varric and Fenris stared at him.

"Among other things," Solas added.

"Riiight. Okay then." Varric looked from one elf to the other, then threw up his hands. "Broody elves. All of Skyhold at the Inquisitor's beck and call and she sticks me with the broody elves." He eyed them balefully. "When they're starting to fight, no less. Just my luck." 

"Or Cassandra's revenge," Solas murmured. 

"That too."

A sudden blast of sound shredded their conversation, ricocheting off the canyon walls behind them like the boom of a qunari cannon. Fenris saw the shadow even before Varric belted out a warning.

_"Dragon!"_

Fenris glided between Solas and Varric like a sailing ship, adrenaline lubricating his movements with practiced ease; transforming unknowns into knowns and panic into competence. The dragon arced over them only once, roaring like a storm arisen, before skidding to earth in a cascade of sand and flames that Fenris ran to meet, sword raised. He might have yelled--but if he did, he knew not what. The battle was all, as it always was.

The canyon walls, even opening out onto the plateau as they did, hampered the dragon's attempts to maneuver. Fenris was quick to take advantage, ducking under and around the creature faster than its bulk could rotate, slashing away at its thick hide. A small voice in the back of his mind remarked that he enjoyed this--the singularity of combat; the overcoming of impossible odds in terms of both size and strength. He rode his adrenaline high with fierce glee, exulting in every swipe of his sword into the orange-and-maroon scales.

Too late he realized that the dragon had been maneuvering too: that despite Fenris' constant, darting attacks, it had a plan. The dragon gave a kind of backward hop all of a sudden, and Fenris had just enough time to preen over having given so great a creature pause before it opened its mouth and, using the narrowing canyon mouth it had backed Fenris into as a funnel, unleashed its fire.

There was a shout, and the reek of burning hair filled Fenris' nostrils as the sheer force of the blast tumbled him off his feet. His brands sang with the touch of magic--a glimmering sheet had descended on him, sheathing him imperfectly from the flame but nonetheless preventing what would surely have been disaster. Coughing, his lungs seeming about to burst from the heat, Fenris scrabbled to his hands and knees, casting around for his sword, which was nowhere in sight.

Instead he saw a slight bald figure, rendered tiny against its foe, staff upraised, a dome of ice and light pulsing out from him against the onslaught of the dragon's fire. The sight was breathtaking, futile, the dome flickering even as it swelled, sheltering both its caster and the fallen elf behind him. _Surely,_ Fenris thought, catching sight of his sword now too far--much too far--across the charred earth. _Surely we will both be turned to cinders._

They would have been. But Varric, taking advantage of the dragon's relative motionlessness as it aimed gouts of flame down the canyon, had ducked under its body, taken a knee just in range, and fired.

Straight into its eye.

The shriek that followed drowned out all other sounds, all other senses, even--Fenris stopped feeling for a moment, the burning in his lungs and in his head. He cringed against the roar as snowlfaces drifed around him like dust motes--the remains of Solas' spell. Then all was whirling sand as the dragon leapt aloft, sending everyeone to the earth below with the force of its backdraft as it winged drunkenly away, still creeling.

Fenris tried to congratulate Varric on his miraculous shot. But he found it suddenly very hard to make his mouth work. A deep cold had settled in his body, sending his teeth chattering against each other, too hard to form words. All he could smell was his own singed hair as Solas struggled to his feet and came over, leanign heavily on his staff, and bent down to look at him.

Fenris tried to thank him. To reach out to him, at least, fingers outspread, seeking acknowledgment of the words his frozen tongue could not say. He was so, so cold though, and while he saw Solas' mouth move he could make out no sound beyond the ringing in his ears.

"Shock," he read, or thought he read, on Solas' lips. Then the brightness of the desert became too much and he closed his eyes, unable to take anymore.

****

Strange crickets. The distance cries of animals. _Seheron?_ Fenris twitched under the covering blanket; flinched as a wave of cool magic washed over him, flickering his brands to life as it did so. He shivered.

"You are awake. I apologize." 

Fenris squinted, making out the dome of Solas' head as a greater darkness against a lesser one. Behind him a lightness, heavily filtered as if by fabric. A moon.

"Are we in the Fade?" croaked Fenris.

"No. Merely a tent." Solas places his hands on either side of Fenris' temples, but with a clinical questing touch rather than affectionate. Fenris thought. "Your fever has broken at last. I healed the burn but--I am no spirit healer." He was silent for a moment. "My shield was insufficient. You have been in and out of consciousness for days."

_The dragon._ Fenris struggled to sit up, then--what of the Inquisitor, and the fortress in the desert, and of Hawke?--but the slightest pressure from Solas' hand on his chest pushed him back to earth immediately. 

"You are too weak," Solas said, voice gentle. "Rest."

"But--"

"We are out here because you could not rest in Adamant. The fortress--it is won. But you raved, waking every few hours, sure that..." Fenris may have been weak but even he could hear when a skein of words rewound themselves mid-sentence. "That you were needed."

"It is won?"

A heavy pause. "Yes."

"At what cost?"

The songs of desert insects an the cries of jackals split the night. 

"Solas."

_"Irlahnash ahn, ensalin?"_

Fenris hissed in vexation. "You know I cannot speak Elvish, now could you just--"

"Hawke."

Fenris felt the cold desert night open up in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps he had misunderstood.

"Hawke? But he's capable, he's--he wouldn't, not out here, not after Kirkwall." He felt his voice flutter; hated the childishness of it. "He _wouldn't_. He wouldn't die--not like this."

"There was a portal to the Fade..."

Fenris felt anger, then, that familiar envelope into which he folded himself for protection from all the world's ills, rise to meet him. "And you let me _sleep_ through it?"

"Fenris, a dragon burned away half your skull, don't you think--"

"And whose fault was that?" Fenris snarled, demanding of the darkness what it would not give him. "Garrett Hawke, my companion, my--my _friend_ gets sucked into the Fade and thanks to your poor aim I'm lying here like a babe in swaddling while he--" Here his voice snagged, as on a nail, and he struck out blindly, beginning to unravel. "You could have gone after him! You say he went into the Fade--who knows more about the Fade than you?"

"Fenris--"

"Why weren't you there with him?" Fenris growled past the lump that was rapidly closing off his throat.

"You need to calm down."

Fenris' voice broke. "Why didn't you save him?"

_"Because I was keeping you alive!"_

Veilfire flared to life in Solas' hands, sparking Fenris' tattoos to answering life and lighting the closeness of the tent with that lurid green glow. In the middle of which, Solas' eyes glared like baleful coals. "Let me make myself abundantly clear," the mage hissed. "See my face as I see it, so your suspicious little mind cannot turn my words around in the darkness." He leaned close. "I. Am. Not. All. Powerful." 

"It seems like you are," Fenris spat.

"Your perception is incorrect then. There was a choice to make, and I made it."

Fenris glared. "You chose wrong."

"It wouldn't be the first time," Solas snapped, letting the veilfire wink out and plunge them both into blackness.

Temporarily blinded, his night vision not yet returned, Fenris heard the sharp crack of the tent flap, the crunch of sand and grit underfoot. He tried to rise, to follow, to demand. But a wave of dizziness overtook him, and he fell back beneath his blanket, helpless. Having not helped. Having been too late, again.

In the dry desert air, his tears evaporated before reaching his ears--both the wounded one and the intact one, beneath its gauze--leaving only tracks to nowhere.


	12. Chapter 12

The return to Skyhold was uneventful, if taciturn. Fenris would have preferred to make the journey alone, of course, but the bouts of dizziness kept a firm grip on him, and he didn't need Solas' stern glare to tell him he was too unwell to go traipsing about the countryside alone. At night, Solas conjured a fire for warmth, and would attend to Fenris' head wound without speaking. Fenris let him. He wanted the dizziness to stop, so he could be free to disappear at a moment's notice. 

Eventually they fell in with a group of Inquisition soldiers, who were quick to haul them aboard their supply cart once Solas told them who they were and where they were headed. Rumor spread like wildfire in an army the same as in a city, it seemed, and whatever the fanciful tales they attached to the the two elves, the soldiers recognized them as important to the cause, and treated them accordingly. If they seemed ill-inclined to talk either to the caravan or to each other, well. Perhaps that was just part and parcel of working so closely with the Herald of Andraste.

By the time they reached the snow-clad peaks that ringed Skyhold like a toothy maw, Fenris felt much better, even if lifting his sword still felt too much for him, and turning his head too quickly brought on waves of nausea. And even if the thought of what happened in the desert still filled him with equal parts fury and loss. 

Upon his return he skirted the flurry of activity in the courtyard, fleeing immediately to the sanctuary and remaining there for several days. Now and again a servant would call up and leave food at the base of the ladder--on whose orders, Fenris neither knew nor cared--but it wasn't until the third day, as the sun set the mountains ablaze with the last of its light, that he heard footsteps on the ladder itself. He turned from the window out of which he'd been staring, expecting to see Varric's gaudy red coat with its gold braid emerging from the hole in the floor.

Instead he saw the Tevinter mage. Of all people.

"Well well, I see our spymaster wasn't joking," Dorian sighed, heaving himself up off the ladder and looking Fenris up and down. "You've certainly seen better days. But it's nothing I'm incapable of fixing."

Fenris scowled, but had to cough a little to get his voice to appear. His jaw cracked with disuse. "I do not need _fixing."_

Dorian gave him a long-suffering eyeroll. "Not your soul, man. Your _hair._ Look at you! You're a disaster." He took two steps forward, saw Fenris flinch, and barked a laugh. "Do you really think I'm going to bite you?"

"Go away."

"Afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you on that one. My orders came from higher up in the castle--classified, you know how it is." Dorian stepped closer, peering curiously at Fenris' head. "Does it...hurt? If you don't mind my asking?"

"I do mind."

Dorian waved this away. "Fine, then. Does it hurt?"

"No." Fenris was only partly lying. It didn't hurt all the time. As long as he didn't touch it.

Dorian frowned thoughtfully at him. "It won't be half bad, you know, if we shave the other side too, and leave a little in the middle--"

"And make me look like you? I'll pass, thanks."

"On the contrary, it would take a great deal more work to make you look like me," Dorian preened. "You don't get this from a few vials of ointment and a chop shop barber in a drafty tower." He shivered. "Come to think of it, it's freezing up here. Don't they believe in fireplaces where you come from?"

Fenris glared.

"Ah. Right. Same place--my apologies. Would you mind if I lit one, though? Can't work with numb fingers." He grinned. "And I promise not to burn down your eyrie."

"Why are you even here?" Fenris demanded as a cheerful fire blinked into existence in the middle of the room. A last resistance. "Why is the Inquisition sending you to...tend to my hair? Surely there is something more you can contribute to the cause?"

"They _did_ tell me you'd be surly, so I'll allow you that one." The Tevinter's gaze was sharp now, no merriment about it. "But consider yourself warned. The last person to imply I wasn't contributing to the cause at hand very much regretted it." The impish grin returned. "And anyway, this _is_ official business. If you are to accompany the Inquisitor to Halamshiral, you'll need to look presentable."

Fenris stared. "Halamshiral?"

"Yes, you know, big place, middle of the woods, property stolen from the elves by greedy Orlesians ages ago. Ring any bells?"

"I know what it _is._ Why are we going there?"

Dorian removed a pair of shears from a velvet pouch and eyed the space above Fenris' eyebrows critically. "Oh, you know, diplomatic efforts," he murmured distractedly. 

"And they want me in attendance?"

Dorian nodded to himself, seeming to have made a plan of attack for the unruly, half-burnt mop of hair before him, and bent in to begin snipping. "They want more of an elf presence, I'm told. Besides, if they've any snooping around to do, you'll make _quite_ the distraction."

"Wonderful."

"Did it smell?"

Fenris felt small bits of his teeth mash themselves together. "Did what smell?"

 _Snip, snip, snip._ "When the dragon got you. Did it smell? I've heard burnt hair smells dreadful."

"I was somewhat distracted. I wouldn't know." Fenris--even Dorian--was silent for a time as the sheers snipped away at the side of his head. The elf should not have allowed this; should have sent the man tumbling down the ladder at the first opportunity--and it took him some minutes to admit to himself why he hadn't done so.

He was lonely.

"You could at least have checked in on your friend, you know," Dorian continued, as though they'd been having a conversation all along.

"Who?"

"Who? Fenris, do you really have so many friends that you lose track? The creepy one, you know. The Tranquil."

"Anders."

"Right. The creepy one." _Snip._ "Josephine was absolutely livid when she found out. She seems to think any injustice experienced within these walls is a personal affront to her, as though we haven't all flocked here from every corner of the earth, with drastically different ideas about--"

"What do you mean, injustice? What happened?"

The scissors paused. "No one told you?"

 _"Kaffas,_ man, tell me what? Answer me!" Fenris whirled, glaring, and felt fear harden in the pit of his stomach at the softening of Dorian's eyes into... _pity._

"Some Chantry boys from Kirkwall got him alone," Dorian said gently. "Josephine says he was trying to keep a low profile, but it wasn't low enough. They really didn't tell you?"

Fenris struggled to focus, to hear through the ringing that had begun in his ears--as though sound were fleeing the prospect of shaping more information, too terrible to hear. 

"Where is he?" he said, voice hoarse.

"One of the balcony rooms. He belongs in the infirmary but there were concerns that--hey! I've not finished the other side yet!"

Fenris did not hear. he was sliding down the ladder like an eel, wood burning painfully into hands which would not feel it yet. _He belongs in the infirmary, but..._ He took off at a run, bursting from the tower gloom into the yellowing pink of a mountain sunset, tingling with the perverse and shameful relief of action. Of having somewhere to be, someone left to be there for.

However late.

Fenris skidded into the room out of breath, almost crashing into Solas where he knelt by the bedside, watchful. He looked up with a start when the warrior slammed to a halt before him. 

"What are you doing here?" Fenris snarled.

Solas remained serene as ever, and did not even deign to raise an eyebrow at the intrusion. "He is unwell. I am helping him as best I can."

"Oh what, like you helped me?"

"Exactly so."

Fenris pushed roughly past the mage, coming to stand by the motionless Anders, whose face remained mostly invisible under a tangle of bandages. Fenris felt the threat of emotions rise to meet him, warring amongst themselves as to which would surface first.

Into the resulting silence, Solas spoke.

"Fractured jaw. Slight concussion. Several broken ribs, all on one side--it appears as though they started out intending to keep the damage invisible." He paused. "Then they changed their minds."

Fenris sank by Anders' bedside, starting at the bandages, trying to see _through_ them--trying, with one frail part of his mind, to feel that it was just. _Is it not?_ that part of him asked. _All those people he killed. Is this not just?_

"I don't know," Fenris whispered. He hadn't meant to say anything aloud, and loathed the thought of explaining himself--especially to Solas.

But the elf did not ask.

How long and in how many ways did one have to pay? Denarius had paid. Had it been just? Fenris had thought so at the time. _Known_ so. But now Denarius was dead and he, Fenris, was alive. When was the balance struck? And by whom? Anders had lost his soul, his demon, the use of his jaw, and a great deal of blood. Was he even yet? What was the point of Tranquility if the only thing left to the Tranquil was to keep suffering, day after day after month after year, for the actions of a man Tranquility had essentially killed?

Such thoughts stung Fenris like briars, and he lurched around, feeling caught, exposed, fearing his thoughts plain on his face for the mage who had saved the wrong man to see.

But Solas had gone, silent as death, and Fenris found himself alone with the inert form of someone he'd once known. Long ago.

*****

"You think the hurting will help, but it won't."

Fenris' chin hit his chest, and he jerked awake, a spasm in his neck informing him that he had been slumped this way for some time. Before him Anders slept--the rise and fall of his chest shallow but steady, like the swaying of a cart--and beside him, peering at him quizzically, stood the pale boy in the massive hat, watching him.

In his fatigue and sleep-muddle, Fenris misunderstood. "I didn't _mean_ for him to be hurt!"

"Not like this, no. But hurting for it anyway won't help him. Or you." Cole cocked his head. "Don't you get tired of hurting?"

"I am not going to dignify that with an answer," said Fenris stiffly, regaining a little of his composure and blustering for what he yet lacked.

"You think you're the only one."

Fenris glared. "What do you mean?"

"Varric, the Inquisitor, even Cassandra. They all hurt for the one with the bird's name. And Solas--you think it was his fault. But you wouldn't be here to think that if he hadn't stayed."

"I grow tired of your games, boy."

"What games? It's not a game. If I play games then so do you, hurting and wanting and hurting for wanting." Cole looked at the bandages that sheathed Anders' face. "Anyone else would hope for release, for an end, but not him. He ended already. He chose to." His pale eyes fixed on Fenris from the shadow of his hat brim. "You chose nothing. You help no one by believing you did."

Fenris voice clattered like shards of glass on cobblestones. "You don't understand."

"No, you don't." Abruptly Cole was out the door, hat in hand, toying with its brim and fixing Fenris with a pellucid, penetrating stare. "Everyone is in pain. I know that, no matter how much I help. But you're wasting hurt on people who do not feel it." He nodded toward Anders and turned to go. "And you hurt others by doing it."

"Doing what?"

"Thinking you're the only or the most or the worst. You're none of those things." Cole opened his mouth to say more, then seemed to change his mind, and ducked out the doorway into the deepening twilight of the battlements. His voice came back disembodied from the dark. "Maybe you were once, but the world is bigger now."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Fenris snapped, or began to. But just then Anders stirred under his blanket, and all the elf's attention swung back inside, to the figure swathed in more bandages than a Nevarran nobleman. His words rang hollowly in the room between them.

"I can get you a healer. Water. Anything."

A muffled voice crawled its way out of the wrappings as through up through a forest. "F-Fenris?"

"Yes. Don't...move too much." Fenris felt embarrassed, suddenly, by his own solicitude, and lashed out before he could stop himself. "How did you let them get you alone? Weren't you paying attention?"

"Too...many." He took a few hesitant, shaky breaths, hissing when the inhale moved his ribs too much. "Hawke?"

The elf paled. He had hoped not to have to mention this, not to have to...process it. He wanted to lock these memories up and throw away the key.

"Dead," he said.

He heard the air rush out of Anders' lips. "How?"

"Something in the Fade, I...I wasn't there."

"He felt the monster was of his making." Not a question. A statement. A colorless fact.

"You speak too much, for one with a broken jaw."

"He did, though. Think it was his fault. It was no accident, was it? Not to Hawke. He must have...chosen." 

Fenris swallowed. "He chose, yes."

"He--" Anders bit off his speech, then, for all the talking had taken its toll, and something clicked in the region of his mouth. Fenris heard it.

"You speak too much."

Anders' whisper was thin, slurred, sound attempting to escape his lips without disturbing the bones of his jaw. "Solas thinks it can be fixed."

Ice wrapped around Fenris' heart like a python around a tree branch, back on Seheron. The kind that glittered in the sun as they choked off your blood supply. "What?"

"He thinks it can end. Tranquility. Fenris--don't let him."

Fenris might as well have been the one his jaw wrapped by bandages. He could not speak. 

"I will end up like Hawke, Fenris. Don't let him."

"How would you perish in the Fade? What does that have to do with anything?" Too many emotions, too many targets, too fast.

Anders twitched as if to shake his head, then wisely did not. "I will die fighting a foe against which I cannot win. It...is more...peaceful this way."

Anger lapped at the corners of Fenris' mind, that wonderful clearing rage that burned away hurt and helplessness; filled the void with purpose and justification. "You would rather let some drunken Chantry initiates pummel you to death in an alley somewhere, instead, then? That would make you happy?" He felt his fingers bite half-moons into his palms; could not stop himself balling his hands into fists. It was so much easier to be angry than sad. 

Or frightened.

"Cannot feel...happiness or...sorrow. Just...peace."

Fenris leapt to his feet and stalked toward the door, pausing only when Anders croaked his name again.

"Don't let him," the ex-mage insisted. "Please promise me, Fenris."

Fenris spun on his heel and stormed out, leaving the debris of silence in his wake.


	13. Chapter 13

“You are not dancing.”

Fenris looked up from the balcony and regarded Solas coolly. They had not spoken since the day in Anders’ room, and focusing on the mage’s face again was like following a winding road through a half-remembered forest.

“No, I’m not,” he agreed.

“And after I went to all that trouble to teach you.” Solas’ words were playful, but his eyes were grim as ever, a pond without reflection.

“Sorry for your loss,” Fenris quipped, almost but not quite regretting it when he saw the mage falter.

“Do not confuse consternation for sorrow,” the mage snapped. “They are vastly different phenomena.”

“I'm so grateful for the education.”

Fenris heard the other elf sigh. They both turned their gazes down into the winding paths of the garden Celene had managed already to restore to its pre-siege splendor—the same could not be said of the rest of Halamshiral.

“He’s down there, you know.”

“Who?”

Solas sniffed. “You know of whom I speak. There is music, and time yet. You could dance.”

“Frivolous.”

“Toward what end do you bend yourself like this?”

Fenris turned, then, and glared. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“At least I have reasons. You have only fear.”

“Of what!”

“Of attachment, affection, loyalty…anything other than a drifter’s immediate desires of food, shelter and a sharp blade.” Solas turned and strode away, back toward the graceful palace doors that beckoned with spices and music and light. He called back over his shoulder. “If you are going to closet yourself away from the world, you had better have a good excuse. Yours stopped being good years ago. “

Fenris turned to offer an angry retort—what would Solas know, and who was he to speak of loyalty when he had let Hawke die, and how did he know what Fenris felt or why he felt it anyway? But the balcony on which he stood now was empty: Solas had already gone. Only moonlight pooled around casements and cornices; flickered in the waters of a pool disturbed by a fountain. And by wind; Fenris inhaled and could smell the forest around them, its wildness, held in check only because it allowed these usurpers of the former elven kingdom to remain.

He could smell, too, the perfume of the winter garden below, where Anders stood ready. Waiting. A shadow among shadows.

Hissing at himself, Fenris turned toward the stairs, washed by the moon so white they were almost blue. They curled downward, and took him with them.

*****

It was startlingly quiet in the garden, and for all that an entire country’s movers and shakers danced, jockeyed and schemed above, the shadowed confines of tree and wooden arbor beneath the palace on its hill remained oblivious to the magnificence of the occasion. _Almost as if,_ Fenris found himself thinking darkly, _it is just another nobleman’s garden, and I am just another man, come to check on his…_

On his what, really? Anders was not and never had been a fiend. Certainly not a…companion. Not in the intimate sense, at any rate. Above all, now, Anders was a responsibility.

Fenris hated responsibility. It tied you down, committed you to seeing a place and a purpose through, and he had only ever done that once in his life, that he knew of.

_And look where that got me._

“Anders?” Fenris stage-whispered, wanting to find the ex-mage without being skewed by one of Leliana’s scouts. “Are you here?

Moonlight purled in pools and eddies around leafy pathways and shadow-laced lattice, but only silence greeted him. He had expected at least one of Leliana’s people to materialize out of the darkness. Perhaps her choice in spices was not so savvy after all…

The softest crunch of booted slippers enveloping two pebbles in its silky recesses—had the pebbles not ground together, silence would have reigned supreme—was all the warning Fenris had. He threw himself sideways, out on an off-balancing angle given the grape arbor that blocked his path down the alley his muscles wanted to tumble him into, away from the moonlit blade that carved away slices of air where his neck had just been. He lost his balance, as he knew he would, and fell, twisting as he did so he landed on his hands and knees. The dagger, taking another swipe at him, glanced hard off his sword where he had belted it upon exiting the ball’s gaudier environs. _Thank you, Leliana,_ he found himself thinking—a waste of time, but the thought rose unbidden—as he caromed away from another slash, not quite making it. Pain bloomed on his upper arm.

He let his brands fill with power, flinging the shadows away from himself and capturing his attacker, for the briefest of moments, in his penumbra: bright blade, striped leggings, a delicate ivory mask on a face cocked to the side in momentary confusion. Or perhaps the wearer was squinting in the sudden brightness of the lyrium tattoos—Fenris didn’t know.

And he didn’t need to, as he reached his arm back behind him toward the body that hung so close to his, suspended in the final blow. He reached right through that daintily-clad torso and plucked the heart from the chest, in an explosion of magic and gore that, Fenris observed dispassionately, would likely give the servants forced to clean it nightmares for months.

If there were any servants left.

For down at the end of this sheltered path, now that he’d rolled into it, he could make out a hunched form, tucked inconspicuously against the wall, out of the way of curious eyes. He couldn’t see much—the embroidery on a lapel, the tip of an ear—but it was enough. He rose, wiping the mess of his hand on the clean parts of his servant’s garb, and flicked off the mask. The expression of horror behind it was not new to him, but the face was—no one he’d seen at the ball would have gone about unpowdered, even under their masks. Not an opportunist seeking a leg up, then. Someone paid to be here. Someone likely not alone.

Fenris withdrew into the shadows of the arbor, sliding his sword from its scabbard as quietly as he could, listening. He was well aware that this could be a futile exercise: the assassin’s boots had been next to soundless. But that _next to_ had been the line between Fenris living and dying, and so he listened. And there it was: beneath the distant din of the evening’s clinking glasses and the even harder to detect murmur of plotting and veiled threats that composed seemingly the entirety of Orlesian conversation--a yelp.

Like a shadow himself, Fenris dashed down the arboreal path, dimly registering more slumped bodies as he moved. As they grew more distant from the balcony stairs, it seemed, the assassins—for it was clear he was correct and there were many—had grown careful in their distribution of corpses. At last he burst out of the foliage into the bone-pale opening of a courtyard, complete with chattering fountain and—

\--and a too-familiar blonde ponytail cocked at an odd angle, trailing across the lip of the fountain on the far side.

Fenris phased. He materialized at Anders’ side, crashing to his knees with the remains of his forward motion and not even feeling it. He held himself to complete silence, not even breathing, for to breathe would be to let the moment roll forward; to let failure evolve from frightening possibility into finality. He jammed his fingers against Anders’ throat as the pitiless moon poured down on both of them, and there—faint—fluttered the beat of life. The moment rolled forward, then, and Fenris sucked in a breath as he surveyed the dark pool staining the skillfully mosaiced cobbles on which the unconscious man slumped. If Fenris could just find a mage, any mage…

“So solicitous, and of a Tranquil, no less!” snarked a voice from the stars, high up and hidden in the shadow of the palace. “Was he your pet, knife-ear? Too shy to go after those with any free will left to refuse you with, hmmm?”

Fenris was on his feet, blade raised, by the time the white-clad assassin in her mask—the twin of the one he’d killed earlier—leapt down from the window ledge from which, it seemed, she had been addressing him. But she merely stood atop a raised flower bed on its stone plinth, surveying the scene below.

“Think of the turmoil you’ll create, knife-ear. Celene’s own rabbit agent, laying waste to members of her loyal royal household! It would be a delicious scandal, if only she’d be alive to see it.”

The harlequin tensed her legs, readying a jump, but never got the chance. A ball of flame burst around her, burning echoes of its image into Fenris’ eyes and temporarily blinding him. He smelled the other man’s spice long before he saw him.

“I hate long speeches, don’t you?”

“Dorian!” Fenris shouted, not caring who heard. “Come here! By the fountain! It’s Anders. He’s—please.”

Burning orbs still paraded across his vision, but he heard the crunch of boots on gravel, felt the thump through the stones as the mage sank down next to Anders. “He’s alive.”

“I know that, but not enough,” Fenris snapped blinking hard. He needed to see; needed to do something. “There could be more of them, I’ll—“

“We know. That’s why we’re here. The Inquisitor and the others took off after them. I have to rejoin them—“

“Dorian, _please.”_ Fenris felt his voice catch. Did not, could not hide it. Heard the intake of breath, felt the hand on his arm, brief, then gone.

“I’ll do what I can.”

Fenris held his arm. “Take it, if you need it.”

He could not see more of Dorian than a faint outline—shadow on shadow—but he could guess by the silence what expression he wore.

“It’s lyrium. You can tap it. For energy. Solas did. If you need to…”

“Fenris,” Dorian said gently. “I haven’t the faintest idea how to do that. And I’m not going to try.” Fenris felt the mage take his arm and place it by his side. “Now then. Give me just a moment.

Fenris felt his brands flare at the nearby use of magic, and could see well enough now by their light to make out Dorian, bent over Anders’ abdominal wound with his hands splayed, bright light infusing them and passing into the unconscious man.

The unconscious man who became conscious, groaning unintelligibly even as Iron Bull materialized in a doorway on the far side of the courtyard.

“Guys! We need you! Now!”

“I’m not going!” Fenris snapped, just as Dorian called back, “Let him stay, Anders is hurt!” They looked at each other, and in the luminescent blue light of the healing Fenris thought he could see a gentleness there, for a moment. Contrition, and pity, and even, for a moment, envy?—before it all folded under suddenly, the man’s deliberate charm drowning out all other emotion—as Fenris had no doubt it was intended to.

“He’ll be right as rain in a few days,” the Tevinter said, a touch too jovially. “But do try to keep him out of any knife fights in the immediate future, hmm? I patched him up, but I’m afraid a more thorough job of it will have to wait until I—“

“Go,” Fenris croaked, hoarse with feeling he didn’t want to have as Anders slumped sideways into him, sliding along the curved bowl of the fountain.

“Dorian, come on!” barked Iron Bull from the doorway—ever the timely interruptor.

Muttering about uncouth ox-men, Dorian rose to leave, but not before tapping Fenris on the shoulder. “He’s in danger out here, without magic,” he whispered. “He has nothing to defend himself with.”

“He’s in danger back in Skyhold, too,” Fenris hissed.

Dorian opened his mouth to respond, but then closed it. Two steps away through, he thought better of it and turned back.

“I know you don’t want to let him go. But it may be harder on him, as he is, keeping him here. With us…with you.”

“Dorian! Let’s move!”

The mage hurried off into the servants’ quarters, his snarky retort to Iron Bull already growing distant. Behind him, Fenris cradled Anders, who had settled into an uneasy sort of sleep, face buried in the crook of Fenris’ arm.

“We can fix this,” Fenris told the garden, the night, and the world that burned beyond the palace walls. Told the man in his arms, so recently almost-dead, and only capable of returning halfway. _As he is._

“We can fix this,” Fenris said again, only to himself this time.

Amongst the grape leaves, an elf shook his head sadly.

*****

“Drink,” Fenris ordered, thrusting the mug of watered-down wine at Anders. The wine was to hide the taste of the healing herbs which -- the palace physician assured him with a distinctly patronizing air -- would be too barbaric to simply administer in unmasked form. _Even to barbarians from the north,_ was his implication.

Anders did as he was told, downing the stuff with nary a grimace. Fenris caught himself wondering whether there was even a point to concealing bad tastes from a Tranquil -- was taste a subjective, feeling-based faculty, and thus denied to them? -- but quickly chased the thought away. The ability to wrinkle up one’s nose at a sub-par flavor or smell was not why he was going to make the argument he was about to make. 

“Did they catch you off-guard?” Fenris asked, pulling a plush velvet chair over on which to sit, facing Anders. A cheery fire crackled on the hearth, sending glimmers off the large supply of gold in the room -- Fenris would have been much more at ease in the servants’ quarters or even the stables, but the Empress had insisted that all the Inquisitor’s party stay in the finest suites. It was the least she could do, given all they had done, she said.

Anders, it seemed, had done very little on that front. “I saw them,” he said in answer to Fenris’ question. So calm, even when recounting his own near-death. “I was keeping watch and I saw them take down one of the servant spies. I tried to yell to warn the others, and she -- I believe it was a she -- attacked. Do you know who they were?”

“Yes, but they’re dead now.” Fenris didn’t care overmuch about the politics of Orlais at this precise point in time. Did they give you non weapon? Nothing with which to defend yourself?”

Anders shook his head slowly, testing its ability to move without causing him pain. “Leliana’s scout said that I stuck out enough as it was, a Tranquil in the Empress’s garden. She said a weapon would only make it worse.”

“I’ll have a word with Leliana,” Fenris growled.

“Even had they given me a sword, I wouldn’t have been of much use. I’m not a warrior, Fenris.”

Unbidden, memories of lightning and fire wielded like extensions of Anders’ own arms rose in Fenris’ mind. Images, then, of the pillar of flame that had once been the Kirkwall chantry. _I don’t want to be a weapon anymore._

“But this is a war,” Fenris wasn’t sure who he was responding to -- the Anders before him or the Anders he remembered from the forest glade. “We need weapons.”

“I already told you I don’t know how to--”

Fenris made a cutting motion with his hand. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean...Anders, I mean all of it. No emotions, no magic…”

“You mean being Tranquil.” So calm.

Fenris let loose an explosive sigh. “Yes, I mean being Tranquil!”

“There is no way to reverse Tranquility, Fenris.”

Fenris pounced on this, as it was exactly the opening he’d been hoping for. “Yes, but what if there were? Would you take it?”

Anders yawned hugely--the medicine appeared to be having its effect. “Idle speculation is not my strong point.”

“I know! You’ve lost your strong point. But just try, would you?”

“I apologize.”

Fenris blinked. “What?”

Even half-lit by the fire, Anders’ face held as serene as the artificial lake outside the window. And as empty. “You are upset. That I was attacked and could do nothing about it.”

“Yes but that’s not your fault!”

“I chose this, Fenris.” His eyes should have been warm and golden in the firelight. There should have been warmth _somewhere._ “It was the last thing I chose. I remember what it was to have feelings I no longer do. I chose this for a reason. Perhaps I am more vulnerable on a mission like this, but--”

“It’s not just missions!” Fenris burst out. “It’s everything! The whole reason you’re here is that people were beating you to a pulp back at Skyhold. And you unable to do a Maker-cursed thing about it. So I begged -- I begged! -- to have you come along here. Serve as a watchman -- something useful, anything, thinking it would be safer than waiting for some drunk templar with an axe to grind to bury his fist in your face. And instead I--I almost got you killed!”

The empty expression on Anders’ face was going to kill him. Fenris lurched away from his chair, tipping it over in the process, and stalked to the window. The first threads of dawn were just beginning to unravel across the mountains. The pale white stonework, the lake, the very garden where it had almost happened -- everything was so beautiful and should have felt it. 

“Your concern is unwarranted,” Anders spoke behind him, between yawns. “I chose this. Not you.”

Fenris’ voice was so low a growl in his throat it almost made him cough. “You chose wrong.”

“You cannot,” Anders began, but never finished. Or rather, he finished with a snore. Fenris looked at him then, mouth agape and likely to drool a little as the night wore on, there on the velour bedspread of a palace. He looked peaceful, it was true. Untroubled. And no dreams would surface to terrorize him through the night, as they undoubtedly would Fenris. And yet…

“He’s right.”

Fenris nearly phased; he restrained himself that much but couldn’t stop the startled leap the sudden soft voice prompted. Shadows begot shadows outside the lavish apartments who se door he’d quietly snicked shut behind him, and this made Cole’s too-pale skin all the eerier in the dim light.

“Don’t _do_ that!” Fenris snapped, but Cole seemed not to hear. 

“He’s right. You can’t. He doesn’t want to be real again.”

Fenris was too raw--too tired, too emotional, too everything--to question how Cole knew what had just passed in the room behind them. He responded as though it made complete sense that Cole knew. _And perhaps it does._  
“He’s wrong, Cole. This--look what happened here today. What almost happened.” He raised his hand, encompassing the palace, the grounds, all the glittering wealth of the empire that had almost toppled. “Against all this, as Tranquil, he doesn’t stand a chance. He’s too vulnerable.”

Cole bit his lip. “He wants to be vulnerable.”

“He’s wrong.

“How can wanting be wrong?”

Fenris frowned. “That doesn’t make sense, what you just said. How can he want anything? He doesn’t...feel...anything anymore.” 

“He used to. Before.”

Fenris took a step forward. “But now, Cole. Now. What does he feel? Can you tell me?”

Cole looked for a moment as though he might refuse. His lips seemed about to form the word “No.” But then he closed his eyes, and held still, and Fenris felt goosebumps prickled down his arms as he knew Cole to be _reaching_ out, in whatever form that took for him. 

Abruptly the limpid blue eyes sprung open, and they seemed relieved. “Nothing,” he said. “He feels nothing. Just like Pharamond.”

“Who is Pharamond?”

Cole hesitated.

“I won’t as you to...read...anyone for me again, Cole. If that’s what you’re worried about.” Fenris felt as though he was coaxing a bird from a bush; delicate, slow movements or he’d fly away. “Who is Pharamond?”

Cole took on the blank expression he sometimes did when serving as a conduit for past experiences. “Logical, so logical. It was all supposed to be so clean and simple, lines on a page, the mathematics of a locked door opening. But then it was everything not logical, so much id drowned out even the curiosity that brought me here: pain and love and loss and pain and love again, over and over, like falling down a mountain that never ends. and it needs to, it has to, make it stop make it stop please take it back, I can’t--” With an effort Cole shook himself, not unlike a sad wet dog, and regarded Fenris from the present again. “Pharamond was unhappy.”

_Rather an understatement,_ Fenris thought, but did not say. He must remain focused, he thought. “And you helped him? This Pharamond?”

Cole shook his head. “Not me. He helped himself. But we had to help him first with the--the dark thing that took him.”

“A demon! How could a demon take a--Tranquil are supposed to be safe from that.”

“No one is safe.”

Fenris let this go for the moment. _Focus._ “How did he do it, Cole? Are you saying he used to be Tranquil and now he isn’t?”

Cole’s voice was sad. “It hurt him too much. They took it away again.”

Suppressing an urge to shake the boy, Fenris struggled to keep his voice level. “Changed him back? Cole, are you saying he found a way to become real again?”

At the words, Cole found his way back to Fenris’ eyes, from whatever dark corner of the past into which he’d been peering. “Yes.”

“How?”

“I told you. The demon.”

“A demon? But then how can---but Justice--”

Cole sighed, a huff of vexation in the velvet-draped silence of the hallway. “Fenris, you’re not listening. He doesn’t _want_ to--”

“He doesn’t _want_ anything!” Fenris snarled, mimicking Cole’s intonation. “The part of him that wants is gone!”

“But you only want it back so he can hurt then, instead of you.”

“That’s--” Fenris stopped. _Not true. Not true, not true, not true._

“Yes it is. But I am sorry it hurts you to see it.”

“You don’t understand. You’re not--” Fenris almost said _not real,_ but then realized how ridiculous this was. If the man wasn’t real, how could he be having a conversation with him? On the other hand, in Cole’s parlance, not being real meant--”

“No,” Cole said flatly.

“But if you helped Pharamond--”

Cole began backing up, wringing his hands. “I’m me. Not that. Not what helped him. I can’t help him, not like that, and don’t ask me to!”

“Cole, I just wanted to know if--”

“No!” The man’s cry was strangled; his eyes caught the faint shreds of dawn coming in through the window and made them into glimmers at the bottom of a well. “You’re asking the wrong person, and for all the wrong reasons. Why can’t you see that? I can’t help you, not like that!”

Cole turned, then, as if to run, and Fenris raised his foot to give chase. But he checked the end of the hallway first--on nights when a coup almost succeeds, it behooves an elf in Orlais to tread softly--and in that moment of inattention Cole simply vanished. One minute Fenris was watching the shadows shift on the man’s overlarge hat, and the next...gone.

Fenris halted in the middle of the hallway, his pulse pounding in his veins as the sun finally hoisted itself up over the embrasure of the mountains, wreathing Fenris in a warmth he did not yet feel.

Not yet. There was a way, though. There was a way. And he would find it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to mephsation for betaing this after I'd left it sitting on my shelf forever!

Warmth enveloped them like a wet blanket, stifling sound--even the shrill bird calls that rang raucously through the undergrowth--and summoning sweat from every pore to run in uncomfortable rivulets under chinstraps and plates of armor.

Fenris felt at home.

He was not the only one. While Cassandra mopped her brow and Blackwall irritably plucked inquisitive insects out of his beard, Dorian fairly basked in the abundant sunshine of the Arbor Wilds, and the last anyone had seen of Iron Bull he had been loudly planning an investigation of some suspiciously large bones a scout had tome them about, “just to see if there might be a dragon, you know.” The man had been ebullient, charging off into the jungle as if it weren’t a stultifying death trap filled with wild animals, enemy soldiers, and--potentially--a dragon.

Fenris had not, under the circumstances, felt the need to join him. 

“That man is crazy,” Dorian murmured, not unfondly, as the horns disappeared into the undergrowth. Fenris caught his tone but said nothing--it was none of his business--but his discretion was not shared by all present. 

“Grinding your corn, is he?” smirked Sera, who looked up from her one-woman game of mumbly-peg with a glint in her eye. 

In the moment it took Dorian to flush, Fenris turned on the rogue, voice flat as the wastes they’d left behind weeks past. “Leave him alone.”

Sera snorted. “Oh it’s you then, is it? Or are you green as new grass just thinkin’ about it? I’ll bet you’re just--”

“I’ll thank you, Sera, to leave your speculation for whatever dingy tavern you wash up in,” Dorian interrupted primly, adding after a moment, “And Fenris, I _can_ fight my own battles, you know.”

“Fine.” Fenris stalked away, strangely annoyed and unsure why. He stared into the brightly-colored foliage at the edge of the camp--the sea blues, the parrot-colored blossoms and sun-bright flashes of water amongst the greenery--and wondered if he ought to go check on Anders, back amongst the supply wagons. Josephine had promised the quartermaster’s girl would keep an eye on him, but if he wandered out of her sight…

“D’you always _do_ that? Just stomp off anytime something doesn’t go your way?”

Fenris spun around, fixing the pale-haired elf perching on a rotting log with a fierce glare. He hadn’t even heard her coming.

“What would you prefer, that I make some childish joke and then tell you all to stuff it when you don’t like it?”

“At least my jokes are funny.” 

“Only to you.”

“Not true. Blackwall laughs, sometimes.” 

“Well congratulations then. Your audience of one approves.”

Sera’s sigh sounded like that of a baker whose careful three-tiered confection has just collapsed. “See, that’s what I’m talking about! Right there. Always got to be a bit of a prick, don’t you.”

Fenris’ face went through several contortions--surprise, fury, and the utterly unexpected _stung_ \--before settling back into calculated disdain. “You’re not exactly in a position to comment on the sunniness of my personality, rogue.” He turned back to the forest. “Go away.”

He heard her laugh behind him. It was more like a cackle. “Go _where,_ stick-in-the-mud? You’re about as elfy as I am--I do streets and back alleys, not trees and...things, in the woods. What, you think if you stare at the trees long enough they’ll start talking back to you, all Dalish-like?”

“No, but maybe you’ll _stop_ talking and leave me alone.”

To Fenris’ discomfiture, he heard the crunch of the log as Sera plonked herself down on it. “So you can do what? Sit around looking miserable until your creepy friend gets his face punched in again?”

Fenris whirled. “That was _not_ my--”

“Sure it was. I’ve seen how you look at him. Like twinkletoes over there looks at Iron Bull, when he’s not hunting up some dragon. But you were so busy feeling sorry for yourself about your dead friend that you let your live one get smashed to bits. Good job on that.”

Fenris felt his throat attempt to choke him on his rage, and his voice came out hoarse. “You treacherous little chit, you know nothing about it!”

Sera snorted. “A chit, am I? Maybe so, but at least I’m a loyal one. I don’t let my friends get bonked when I’m not lookin’.” Fenris took an angry step toward her, and she waggled her eyebrows. “What are you going to do, rip my heart out with your weird tattoo magic? I’m just telling the truth. I’m not the one who cut him off from his beloved demon so he can’t even shit without asking permis--”

“Sera,” Cole said quietly, appearing from nowhere. “You’re hurting him.”

She grimaced. “Not really, and besides, who are you to--”

“He hurts like it did when they kept passing one by one, looking but not feeling, ribs poking out every which way and not a spare _glance_ for the child hit by a carriage, less important than the dirt that coated her, less _seen_ than the tiny child crying by the broken body of her--”

“All right, dammit! He’s boring, anyway.” She rose to leave, and perhaps toss one last jab over her shoulder as she did so--but saw that Fenris had disappeared during Cole’s speech, with not even a quivering leaf to announce his passing.

“Damned elfy business,” she muttered, and stalked back toward the main encampment.

*****

There he was. Anders bent to pick up a crate from the wagon bed and add it to the pile at his feet. His motions were slow, methodical, and precisely the same, crate after crate. He did not speak to either of the individuals working next to him -- a man and a woman who, Fenris determined after squinting at them a good long while, showed as little interest in Anders as he did in them.

Fenris leaned back against the huge mossy trunk he’d been crouching behind and sighed, relief and embarrassment gusting through him like the breeze this jungle sorely needed. _I shouldn’t have let her get to me,_ he chided himself, or tried to. Part of him still smarted, though, beneath the outrage and the relief: Sera had not been entirely wrong. If he hadn’t locked himself away after Hawke’s death; if he hadn’t been so stupid as to trust that no one would seek revenge on Anders for what he had done…

_What he had done._ Fenris realized with a jolt that he hadn’t thought about it for months. After two years of hunting the mage responsible for the pillar of flame that engulfed the Kirkwall Chantry, he hadn’t thought about it in...he couldn’t remember when. Even when Hawke...even when he heard of Hawke’s death, his memories had been of dice games and arguments and caves and victories. Not the loss that could not be undone; that burst open the seams of a land ripe for war, whose peace he was even now trying to stitch back together.

He glanced back around the tree again, to Anders’ calm face as he worked -- only faintly bruised, now, after the surgeon’s firm ministrations. While she didn’t want to risk taking the Tranquil back to work with her -- “I can’t have a target for that kind of tumult in my infirmary, you understand…”--it seemed she held a soft spot for her quiet, hapless one-time helper. And had that been a hint of accusation in her eyes, the one time Fenris had happened upon her on the way out of the balcony room given over to Anders for his recovery If so...was she wrong to accuse?

A flapping of wings startled him from his thoughts, and his hand darted instinctively toward his sword. “Idiot,” he chastised himself. “Now you’re starting at shadows.”

“I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” came a voice from behind. “Some shadows bite.”

_The witch._ He turned, with exaggerated slowness, an appearance of nonchalance that he didn’t think would fool the woman for a moment. “Morrigan.” He bit off the word succinctly: no need to pretend he trusted her, after all. Army full of mages or no.

Her thoughts seemed to run along similar lines, as she raised an eyebrow at him. “If it’s magic you fear, boy, I’m afraid you’ve picked the wrong army.”

“I chose the Inquisition,” Fenris snapped. “Not some manipulative Chasind witch who plays empresses like puppets.” 

Morrigan’s laugh chimed like sharp bells in the jungle. “Is that what they’re saying? And tell me, shadow warrior, do you believe everything you hear”

Fenris flinched at the term, and he tried too late to conceal it -- she saw that she’d unnerved him. 

“You see, I, too, can listen.”

“I am no shadow warrior, witch, any more than you are a courtesan.”

The witch’s smile was all teeth. “I could not think of a better comparison if I tried. However,” she continued, with an abrupt change in tone to businesslike efficiency, “I did not come to parry words with you. I’ve come to make you an offer.”

Fenris felt his eyes narrow. “I refuse.”

“You haven’t even heard me out!”

“I still refuse.”

Feathers bristled as Morrigan let loose a sigh. “Fine then, if you want you friend to remain Tranquil forever…” She began to turn away.

Fenris found his hand closing on her shoulder before he could stop himself. _You’re caught,_ a small voice in his head shrilled, but it was too late.

“Wait! What can you...do for him?”

Morrigan turned back to him, amusement written in her features. “What is it that you want? And...what are you willing to do for it?”

“You implied he needn’t be Tranquil. That there was some way to...restore him.”

“There is.”

“Well then clearly that is what I want! Why can’t you just -- what? What are you laughing at?”

“Your ‘clearly,’ if you must know. You have no idea what you’re asking of him, or if he even --” she caught herself short, and leaned closer to peer at him. Fenris had to actively resist the urge to pull away. “By all the old gods, you do know, don’t you?” Morrigan breathed. “And he doesn’t want it.”

Fenris’ voice was gravel. “He’s not himself, witch. Make…” He struggled to bring himself under control. “Make your offer.” 

“Far be it from me to pass judgment on you. I was only curious if you had discussed it with him.” She shrugged. “My offer is this. The elven mage you travel with. Solas? I don’t trust him.”

Fenris frowned. “That’s not exactly an offer.”

“I’m _getting_ to it, shadow warrior.” Her eyes flashed in the jungle’s gloom. “As I was saying, I don’t trust him, and I want you to follow him. Follow us.”

Fenris could not stop the shock from bleeding onto his face, and again Morrigan saw it there and laughed. 

“Oh not like _that_ , you poor fool. Though I suppose I should thank you for the...confidence, I suppose. I mean when the group of us enters the temple. When we start off, follow behind at a safe distance. I want to know what he does.”

“Just...follow him?”

Morrigan sighed. “And be ready to...stop him. If necessary.”

Fenris folded his arms across his chest. “And just how exactly am I supposed to know when it is necessary?”

Around them birds swooped and called, and the cries of the animals echoed amongst the trees. Morrigan looked, at the moment, like she could utter a few wild yowls herself. “There is an artifact. In the temple. One which he must not get his hands on.” 

“And you must.” It was not a question.

“Yes, I must. It is...more important than you could possibly understand.” 

Fenris gave her a flat stare. “Try me.”

“If I were to waste the entire day explaining it to you there will be no journey to follow! Can it not be enough that I need this thing which Solas must not have, and that you are willing to stop him in return for the return of your friend’s soul?”

Fenris blinked. “His soul?”

“Call it whatever you like, you know part of him is gone. I can bring it back, if you do this thing for me.” Her eyes ran him up and down, probing, questing. “Have we a deal?”

“What proof do you have that you can do this thing? Restore Anders?”

He had never met Morrigan: never been closer to her than the distance of the vast ballroom dance floor at Halamshiral, where she had stood by the Empress’ side. If he had known her, though, he suspected the look she now gave him would have signalled something: would have been some trademark gesture that heralded the beginning of a new chain of events which he was sure to regret.

As it was, though, he did not know her, and could only observe that slight darkening of her eyes, that turning inward, with vague trepidation.

“Do you suppose I seek a mere trinket? In the depths of an elven temple, in the heart of a jungle -- somewhere Corypheus himself is fighting to keep from us?” A slow smile curled the side of her mouth. 

“The thing in the temple? That’s what will give you the power?” Fenris glowered. “That’s convenient.”

“Oh yes. I know when I think ‘convenient,’ I think of a guarded fortress with two armies fighting over it.” Morrigan’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Come now, I don’t have all day. Do we have a deal, or not?”

Fenris’ eyes strayed away from the witch, back to where Anders was unloading another bundle from the back of a wagon. “How do I know you won’t just take the thing and leave?”

Morrigan sniffed. “If you can’t trust a witch of the wilds, well, who can you trust these days?” She caught Fenris’ look, and gave a theatrical sight. “Look, I know your type quite well, and I know there isn’t a thing I can do to make you trust me completely. I don’t even need that, though. All I need is for you to keep an eye on Solas. And in return, I use the power of the elven artifact to restore your friend. Then we can happily part ways and never deal with each other again. Does that sound fair to you?”

“You are offering me much, for very little. I have every reason to be wary.”

“Of course you do. But you’re only the most convenient person for me to approach. If you say no, I’ll just find someone else. So why don’t you make both our lives easier?”

Fenris glanced toward Anders again. _I chose this…_

“All right,” he said gruffly, trying to bury his unease in bravado. “Just tell me how far back to follow.”

“Excellent.” Morrigan vanished as swiftly as she had appeared -- one moment she was there with that almost-but-not-quite-mocking voice ringing in Fenris’ ears; the next he could hear and see only the birds of the forest, winging their way toward innumerable forest-wise raucousness.

Fenris tried to shake loose the stone of anxiety that had settled into the pit of his stomach since Sera’s diatribe, to no avail. He started to turn away, back toward camp, but on impulse, stopped. Considered. And came out of the woods again, this time into the dappled sunlight where Anders stood.

“Can I borrow you for a moment?” he asked, with completely unnecessary guile.

He did think to employ it, though. Just in case.

*****

The party assembled and set out shortly thereafter. In the furor surrounding the concentrated assault upon the forest forces, it was easy to slip away. The clash of steel on steel rang through the trees, scattering the birds but only to higher branches, above the concerns of men. Cullen’s directive had been plain: buy time for the Inquisitor and her group to reach the elven temple, and to clear the way for them to be able to use that time. With orders like this, it only made sense for one of the Inquisitor’s warriors to go barreling off down the line of scouts, sword aloft and eyes sharp for any of the strayed elves that seemed to congregate in the shadows like midges. And if his battered Tranquil attendant appeared to be trotting along after him, well. Once can convince oneself one sees strange things in the chaos of battle.

It had been easy to muster Anders from the ranks of the quartermaster’s workers. Too easy by half -- no suspicious looks, no double-edged phrases as they picked their way around the edge of the encampment toward the fighting. But of course, Fenris reminded himself, in the eyes of the workers he was probably doing them a favor. No one wanted a soulless Tranquil hovering around, even if he never complained.

Perhaps that was the one of the main problems -- he never complained. Here he was, utterly defenseless in an unknown jungle with no magic and no weapons, and it never even occurred to him to accuse Fenris of wrongdoing. He just ran when Fenris said run, and froze when he said to freeze. _Like a dog,_ thought Fenris, only it wasn’t in his own voice that he thought it. The words belonged to Denarius, and he growled to hear them here, in his head, when the man was years dead and, by rights, should have been long forgotten by everyone left in Thedas.

“Did we go the wrong way?” Anders whispered. Not concerned, just seeking a logical explanation for the sound Fenris had made. 

Beside him, Fenris tensed, but did not take his eyes off the distant white blur that was Dorian’s robe, disappearing further into the trees with the Inquisitor. “No we did not,” Fenris replied, and picked up their pace.

“For a moment you sounded--”

“Be quiet.”

And he was. No sass, no accusations, just...silence. Of course the workers had been willing to part with him. They’d have handed him to Corypheus if the monster had but to ask. No one wanted a Tranquil around, much less one who required guarding against the more zealous of his antagonists. No one wanted to be bothered. 

_A whole life spent like this, always the inconvenience, the unrewarded diligence… _The soullessness. Fenris recognized that he was trying to convince himself. Of the wrongness, both in Cole’s commentary on Anders’ own conviction that this was for the best, and that this was what the mage wanted.__

There wasn’t anyone left to _want_ anymore. 

“Keep low,” Fenris whispered as a creature wreathed in shadow materialized before the two guards on their right, further down the trail. _I am no fog warrior._ Perhaps he wasn’t, and perhaps these jungle elves weren’t, either -- but he could certainly see the similarities. He didn’t want to test his mettle against them, however. He lacked the arrogance to think he could wrap up the fight swiftly enough to keep the Inquisitor’s party in sight -- and he did not fancy wandering the jungle alone in search of them. 

___Not alone._ Fenris glanced sideways at Anders. For all intents and purposes, he _was_ alone in these woods. It wasn’t as though Anders could contribute anything to an ambush. And here he was, an extra target, an extra source of worry for his companions: a creature in need of protection._ _

___This is what it means to become attached,_ Fenris found himself thinking. _This is where such things go._ But surely this was too soon; surely in this time of very literal upheaval, a man with skills like Anders could not be allowed to merely inhabit the echoing shell of the man he’d once been. Surely he should be restored._ _

__Fenris thought of weapons, both man-made and men. And then tried to stop thinking altogether._ _

__As they advanced, snatches of conversation drifted back to them, like smoke through the branches. There was the melodious cry of the Inquisitor and the sharp laugh of Morrogan--what she found remotely amusing about the situation, Fenris could not fathom. There was the silk-smooth panaches of Dorian and Sera’s raucous whoop when an enemy fell. Solas’ voice was too quiet to reach them at their distance, and Fenris found this oddly disconcerting, as though the mage had somehow known they were listening, and moderated his voice accordingly. It made the hairs on the back of Fenris’ neck stand on end._ _

__Anders, for his part, kept up, observing the violence around them with all the emotion of a rock. Once they came upon the eviscerated corpse of an Inquisition soldier, still warm, whose killer had fallen not moments before to one of Dorian’s fireballs. In their race to the temple, the Inquisitor and her group hadn’t noticed this boy in the bushes -- but Fenris and Anders nearly stepped on him._ _

__He was still alive -- though not, from the looks of him, for long -- and his mouth opened and closed soundlessly, his eyes darting between the two of them, seeking a wordless thing._ _

__Fenris bit off an oath, knelt next to the boy, and took his hand. The boy’s brown eyes stretched wider, and he struggled to speak, in vain -- for his lungs could not get enough air across his vocal chords, punctured as his chest cavity was._ _

__Fenris looked across the body to Anders, remembering the white light the man could summon that could heal, it seemed, anything. His hands hung limp at his sides now, lightless as his eyes -- and the boy between them continued to wheeze and gasp fruitlessly._ _

__“Maker be with you,” Fenris muttered gruffly, and pressed two fingers to the boy’s chest. Two fingers that sank in, gentle almost in their flare of lyrium tattoo light, and stopped his heart._ _

__The pulse in the wrist Fenris held stuttered to a halt, and Fenris set it down onto the loamy forest floor gently. Someone would find the boy--wouldn’t they? The Inquisition had people whose whole job was to comb the battlefields for the dead. Didn’t they? Or would the waxy leaves of the breadfruit tree’s spreading branches bet the only grave he ever had?_ _

__Abruptly Fenris realized he could no longer hear any of the Inquisitor’s party. Swearing for real this time, he jumped to his feet, hauling Anders up after him a good deal more roughly than was strictly necessary. “Come on,” he growled. “We can do nothing more here.” If Anders caught the implied _anymore,_ he gave no indication._ _

__By the time they caught up with the group, all of them creeping up the temple steps, which loomed heavy with vines as with drapes of fine lace, the actual stonework only visible in strategic places. Fenris held out a hand to forestall any forward progress by Anders until the Inquisitor and company were safely out of sight._ _

__“You don’t want them to see us,” Anders said. It was not a question; he rarely asked question._ _

__“No, I don’t,” Fenris whispered, his eyes crawling over the ruins for cover, and wondering how bad the echoes might be. He could move silently enough, but Anders?_ _

__“The others see us,” Anders reported, and Fenris allowed himself a tiny sigh._ _

__“What oth -- “_ _

__A blade-point in the back of his neck drew him up short, and he swallowed._ _

__“If we wished, you would be dead,” said a voice from behind him. “I am called Abelas, and I am shortly to greet those you have been following.”_ _

__“We weren’t -- “_ _

__“Stumbling through the woods, tripping over corpses, giving your own forces a wide berth -- do not do yourself the disservice of thinking you were stealthy.”_ _

__The speaker came into view, then, circling carefully around so Fenris could see his face. An elf, then -- an elf in stranged, intricate overlapping plates of gold armor, with vallaslin above his eyebrows and a silken black hood atop his head. He still held the knife extended toward Fenris, and held it with the practiced ease of one who both knew how to use it and had no compunctions about doing so._ _

__“We were told to expect you,” the elf said, and betrayed not the merest flicker of an eyelash when Fenris’ mouth gaped open._ _

__“But -- but that’s not--”_ _

__“You are following the shemlen witch, are you not?”_ _

__Fenris made some rapid calculations. Clearly Morrigan hadn’t been the one to alert these elves -- more were melting into view, now, with arrows drawn -- to his coming. Had she built that kind of rapport with them, there would be no need for him. He didn’t know who had, but it sounded like the only way to be the person they expected was to play along._ _

__“We are,” he replied, with a great deal more authority than he felt._ _

__“Whether or not your quarry survives will depend on whether she, and those with her, respect tradition.” Abelas’ gaze was as sad and cold and hard as iron in winter. “Should they despoil the temple of Mythal, we will not spare her.”_ _

__“I...we...understand,” Fenris said, glancing to Anders._ _

__Anders, who stood calmly as a half-dozen elves aimed gold-shafted arrows at his heart._ _

__Abelas saw his look. “You endanger him, bringing him here.” He lowered his knife. “The world has changed much. Such a thing would not have been allowed in my time.”_ _

__Fenris wanted to know what this elf’s time was, exactly, but worried asking would give him away. He wondered, too, whether it was Tranquility the elf meant wouldn’t be allowed, or the ‘endangering’ of a Tranquil. _As if he’ll be safe from danger back at Skyhold!_ Or, he reflected soberly, anywhere else._ _

__Abelas seemed to return from some interior toward which he’d stood frozen, listening. “You will come with us. Do not think you will survive if you seek to warn the others. Mythal will suffer no injustice, nor will we.”_ _

_Mythal._ Fenris tried to think, as the hooded elf led them down a side corridor whose artful tiling made it almost invisible against the mosaic from which it led. Mythal had been an elven god, but these elves seemed nothing like the Dalish, except for the vallaslin. They stayed put, for starters, and Fenris had never heard of a Dalish clan staying in place for very long -- much less claiming guardianship of any sort of temple. What was this place? Who were these people? 

__Who had told them he was coming?_ _

__They trotted down passages alive with the reflected light of veilfire but not sunlight: mosaics of stags and wolves, trees and rivers shimmered as they passed, seeming almost to move out of the corner of the eye. Fenris knew without a doubt that the elves he saw were by no means the only elves watching them -- escorting them -- and that to deviate from the path dictated by Abelas would likely result in an arrow through the neck before he even heard the twang of the bow._ _

__They were, in a word, trapped. Fenris cursed the Ferelden witch for getting him into this. Then he cursed himself for getting Anders into it, too. Morrigan’s promise of reversing Tranquility would do Anders no good if he were too dead to receive restoration._ _

_Restoration._ The world rolled around Fenris’ head as they traversed the ruins. Was that what these elves were doing? These ruins were clearly old, and much grander than Halamshiral. The mosaics were in tremendous shape for having been locked away in a jungle in a crumbling temple for...however long they’d been here. Where these elves here to restore the place? To reclaim it? Had they walked smack into the embers of a revolution of the kind Briala, the Empress’s one-time elven lover had only dreamed of? 

_Always elves,_ Fenris thought bitterly. Focusing on the past instead of the present. On forgotten glories instead of those suffering now, from the Ferelden alienages to the Tevinter slave quarters, who could have used the help. Who needed the help. 

__Elves always got it wrong, Fenris thought. And now he was neck-deep in them, with no way out except to continue bluffing his way further into their stronghold._ _

Eventually the sounds of combat reached them. Fenris glanced at his guide, but there was nothing on the elf’s face to betray that he’d heard a thing. _Maybe it’s an elven trick,_ Fenris thought. _Convince invaders they’re outnumbered, their forces now under siege and losing, and you give up._ He wouldn’t put it past these elves. He wouldn’t put anything past them. Or, he added blackly to himself, past Morrigan. All of them -- witches, the Dalish, these strange temple elves -- were squabbling over some resource they couldn’t -- wouldn’t -- even name to him. Spy on this one, spy on that one, give it to me, no give it to me -- he had had it, with all of them. Did they not know the price of meddling? Of wheeling and dealing with forces they thought they understood? Was Anders not proof enough for them? 

__Suddenly the tiled corridor they were following opened up onto a veranda overlooking a spire. A small spire, but a spire nonetheless, tumbling with verdant greenery and sporting, at its summit, some kind of ruin. Carved stairs cut up to the summit from the courtyard-like space at the base of the spire, where presently -- Fenris heard the hiss of breath from their guide as they saw -- the Inquisitor and her team fought with...something. Some red monstrosity. A templar?_ _

__Surely not._ _

__“This has gone on long enough,” their guide snapped, drawing his blade. Drawing it next to Anders, who still looked down on the fight, oblivious to the threat next to him._ _

__Fenris phased. He had no time to shout, to draw his own sword, nothing. He just phased forward, cannoning into the elf’s side, knocking his swing off-balance and sending a chip of the stone balustrade pinging off the edge of the veranda as the ancient sword lopped it off with a clang. Those below were too focused on their own battle to notice an errant chunk of rock flying through the air._ _

__The other guardians, however…_ _

__“Run!” Fenris barked at Anders, who took off down stairs Fenris hadn’t seen -- down, toward the base of the spire with its strange ruins. Fenris rolled to his feet and took off after him, barely registering the flapping of wings overhead as a raven -- of all things -- fluttered past. He could hear orders being given behind him in the elvish language he couldn’t understand, and he didn’t wait to learn if they meant “kill” or “hold your fire.”_ _

__He ran._ _

__At the base of the stairs, they had to decide -- right, left, or straight? To the right, the fighting continued, while to the left, the unknown lurked. A way out of this damned temple or a dead end -- who knew? Fenris turned to the right, for they had a better chance of surviving the guardians together with the Inquisitor and the others than running on their own through the maze-like temple, Fenris thought. Morrigan’s deal be damned._ _

__But Anders did not veer to the right; did not even stop. He ran straight onward, up the steps and through the stone archway, up the spire. Fenris bellowed his name, but to no avail -- where was he going? Cursing, the elf leapt up the steps two at a time, expecting an arrow through his skull at any moment. Bloody, bloody mages, current and ex- and everything in between._ _

__“Anders, what in the Maker’s name do you think you’re--” Fenris heaved himself up the last of the steps and skidded to a halt._ _

__Before them stood Morrigan, arms crossed, with that ever-present smirk on her face. “Took you long enough,” she said, sparing Fenris and Anders only a glance before turning her back on them in favor of a pool of water at the spire._ _

___She doesn't even fear exposing herself like this,_ Fenris thought grimly. He had half a mind to bridge the gap between them with a roar and draw his sword on her, but he tamped the urge down. A deal was a deal, if it could be salvaged._ _

__“I did what you asked,” Fenris said, voicing his thought. “I followed them. I thought you’d be down there with them.”_ _

__“I have other matters to attend to,” the witch murmured distractedly, stepping closer to the pool of water. Over it loomed a great mirror Fenris recognized as the same kind Merrill had once tried to put back together in Kirkwall. What had she called it? An eluvian. And when they worked properly they functioned as portals, or passages, or something--_ _

__“Hey! We had an agreement!” Fenris snapped, leaping forward to grab Morrigan by the shoulder._ _

__She spun around to face him with a snarl. “Get away from me, sellsword! You know nothing about what you’re dealing with!”_ _

__“Neither do you, witch!”_ _

__Both Fenris and Morrigan stared as Solas crested the top of the stairs, fixing them with a piercing look. “Fenris, I was not aware you had lowered yourself to such...company.”_ _

__Fenris felt himself bristling, against all sense and logic. “She said she can help him,” he growled, and watched as something intangible flashed across Solas’ face, quicker than Fenris could identify._ _

__“Solas, what’s going on? Where did--Fenris? Morrigan?”_ _

__The Inquisitor, Dorian, Sera -- suddenly the spire was full of people, crowding its edges -- and the edge of the pool as well._ _

__“This is the Well of Sorrows?” the Inquisitor said, raising an eyebrow at the pool._ _

__“Stay back,” said Solas, gesturing to the party._ _

__Morrigan glared at him. “What for? So you can steal its power for yourself?”_ _

__And just like that, Fenris and Anders were forgotten. The group of them -- having just escaped certain death for who knew which time -- now descended into what seemed to Fenris to be petty argument. They knew they couldn’t leave this power -- whatever it was; even Morrigan didn't seem sure of anything other than the fact that it was “old” and “important” -- there, free for the taking by any of Corypheus’ soldiers -- but they could not decide whose duty it would be to become the vessel of such power. Who was most loyal to the cause? The most deserving? The most...capable?_ _

__Fenris didn’t understand. It was just a pool of water, as far as he could see -- the real object of power seemed to be the eluvian on the other side. He had a sinking sensation that the witch had used him somehow -- that he had attended this foray into the temple merely to serve as a distraction, while she made her way to this damn pool of water. He wondered if the witch had ever really known a way to reverse Anders’ tranquility, or if she’d simply read Fenris like a book, determined what he most wanted in this world, and offered it to him -- bright and shining as a golden apple, and about as real._ _

_What I most wanted._

He looked at Anders, who watched the argument bounce around those gathered on the spire, his head swiveling from speaker to speaker, sometimes in rapid succession. Like a dog, Fenris thought. Like a damned loyal dog who knew no better than to go where he was told, do what he was asked, and then wag his tail when his master tells him he did a good job. That was not the Anders Fenris had known, and Fenris felt the disjuncture between the two like a blow to the ribs. _He’s not even real anymore,_ Cole had said, and while Fenris had dismissed it as the time as a trick of the strange boy’s speech, he realized now that Cole had a point. Anders wasn’t real. Not like this. The man whose yellow ponytail bobbed back and forth as he looked from one furious interlocutor to the next was a fallacy, a straw man set up by fate and by Fenris to serve as a stand-in for the man who had blown up the Chantry. And for mages everywhere. _And he’ll keep being their straw man until they torch him,_ Fenris realized. The only reason anyone on this spire cared about the Tranquil was because Fenris continued to drag him everywhere, to try and outpace the enemies who were destined to catch up to him, one day when Fenris wasn’t looking, and finish him off. Fenris could only be in so many places at once, and as the Inquisition’s best and brightest continued to fill the temple with the echoes of their internal power struggle, Fenris realized that he could not continue like this. He could not keep the ex-mage alive on his own, nor could he find anyone else to help him, as he was. People _loathed_ the man. And what could he offer them to make them care? A bandage, here and there? That vacant stare? There was nothing to keep Anders from being murdered in Fenris’ sleep -- it had almost happened twice now -- and, standing in the dilapidated temple, betrayed and discarded like a dull blade, Fenris could admit this to himself. But not just to himself. 

__“Anders,” he said, coming over to stand next to the other man. Bruises from his most recent ordeal mottled the ex-mage’s face with the ugly green and yellow of healing, and Fenris forced himself to look at them. At each and every mark, telling himself that he had had a hand in the administering of each one -- through his arrogance in thinking that Tranquility would solve all Anders’ problems; through his weakness when illness or injury or simple fatigue tore him from the Tranquil’s side, leaving him exposed._ _

__“Anders,” Fenris said again, meeting those brown eyes. Confronting the emptiness there._ _

__Anders blinked blankly back at him. “Yes, Fenris?”_ _

“I can’t protect you. Not like this.” _My fault._ “Not when I’m the only one.”

__“You don’t need to protect me, Fenris,” Anders said, as if he were giving the time of day. “As I’ve said, it is only natural that people do not trust me. Or like me. That is beyond your control.”_ _

__“It is,” Fenris admitted, stepping closer. “But I can at least try to...make them care. Even if only for their own sakes.”_ _

__He lifted both arms, then, placed them on Anders’ shoulders, and shoved him. Hard._ _

__Directly into the Well of Sorrows._ _


	15. Chapter 15

“Do you even know what you have done to him?” Solas all but shouted. “Do you have any _idea?”_

Self-possession, restraint, understatement -- everything that usually defined Solas was gone, replaced by unbridled fury. Fenris met the elf’s eyes, but only just.

“I made it so others have a vested interested in his better welfare now,” he replied evenly.

“A vested interest in his--” Solas spluttered. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand anything!”

“The healers say he will wake,” Fenris interjected, pleased at the continued neutrality of his own tone. “You won’t have lost whatever power he gained from the--”

Solas, who had been pacing back and forth across the circular room like a caged wolf, spun on his heel and stalked over so suddenly Fenris worried the mage was going to choke him. 

“Oh yes, the weapon. Worry about the weapon, your precious power. How could you do that to him? I thought you cared for him.”

“I did this _because_ I cared for him!” Fenris snapped, his stalwart facade beginning to fracture. “Now he’s--”

“Now he’s a _slave,”_ Solas snarled.

“As if you’d know anything about it!” Fenris hissed back. 

Solas face darkened, clouds moving across the moon. He opened his mouth, and it seemed to Fenris as through fire and smoke pouring out would be entirely sensible. Then, with a click that echoed around the chamber, Solas slammed his teeth shut, settling for a smoldering look that some distant, puzzled part of Fenris read as, inexplicably, sorrowful.

“You know what that place was, do you not?” Solas said. Painfully, desperately clear. Calm.

“A temple of Mythal.”

_”The_ Temple of Mythal. And that well which you -- that _well,”_ he tried again, “was the resting place of thousands of years of memory.

“I don’t understand.”

“I can see that.” Solas took a deep breath. “Every priest of Mythal, when they die, gives their memories -- their experiences -- to that well. All those thousands of years of heritage, knowledge, wisdom, it’s all gone now.”

“It’s not gone, though! Anders has it. When he wakes up--”

“Will he even _understand_ it? Exactly how much ancient Elvehn did your friend have a chance to learn, locked away in his precious tower?”

“I’ve _freed_ him!” Fenris insisted. “Now you’ll all notice if some drunken lout wants to take him to task for an unlucky throw of the dice.”

“Is that what you call it?”

Both Solas and Fenris looked up.

He shouldn’t have been able to speak. Shouldn’t even have been able to stand, the healers said. Yet Anders loomed above them, gripping the balcony with knuckles white from a need for balance or with...rage?

“Anders?” Fenris felt his voice catch; ignored it.

“An unlucky throw of the dice.”

Anders’ face twisted in pain, and he squeezed his eyes shut, grimacing, jerking his head almost as if to shoo something -- someone -- away. “You would reduce what I did to… _luck?”_

“You’re you,” Fenris breathed, at the same time Solas gaped. “That’s not possible.

Anders focused his gaze on Fenris, wavering on his feet. “I am myself, yes. Myself and ten thousand strangers. All of them yelling in...gibberish...in my head.” He closed his eyes again, momentarily, his jaw clenched tight. Fenris read the furrowing of that brow, the bunching of corded muscle around neck and eyes and even hands as signs, glorious heralds, of Anders’ return. He hadn’t just given the Inquisition reason to protect the man. 

He had brought him _back._

“What are they saying?” Solas’ voice almost cracked in its pain, sudden and unexpected as a landslide. “Tell me. Anything -- anything you can make out.”

“I...I can’t, I…” Anders was looking at them and yet he wasn’t -- his attention turned inward, focusing, despairing. “I never wanted to _feel_ this again!” he howled. In the circular tower room his words ran round and round, condemning. His eyes snapped back into focus, on Fenris this time. “Why have you done this to me? What were you thinking?”

“I...I thought…” Fenris stammered.

“You thought _what?”_ Anders’ voice cracked and shook now like a castle under siege -- and quickly falling. “How many times and in how many ways did you ask me if I regretted my Tranquility? And did I ever say yes? Even _once?”_

Fenris’ mouth tried hard to produce sound.

Above them, clutching the railing, Anders began to sob. Great, messy sobs that wracked his body and ripped around the tower, torrential and terrifying in their intensity.

“Months of emotions, dammed up,” Solas whispered, almost certainly to himself. But Fenris heard him.

“I--I don’t understand,” he spoke haltingly. “I thought--”

“I chose my punishment!” Anders shrieked from the balcony, light beginning to gather around him like a beacon. “I chose it, and you took it away!”

Flames licked around Anders’ feet and Fenris realized too late that the newly-restored mage intended to immolate himself. With a cry, Fenris leapt and phased _upwards,_ straining toward the balcony, to get there in time--

\--and he arrived right as a vortex of cold descended on the spot Anders stood. A wall of ice and snowflakes whirled upward from Solas’ outstretched hands down on the ground level, and caught Fenris full in the face as he toppled into Anders, both of them felled by the force of the miniature storm.

Beneath Fenris in his arms where the elf had tackled him, Anders wept freely, though the flames did not return. “I chose it,” he whimpered, snot and tears mixing freely as they leaked down his face. “I chose it, and you took it away. A throw of the _dice.”_

“But, Justice!” It had just dawned on Fenris to ask. “Anders, Justice! Is he...is it...still there?”

The look Anders skewered Fenris with dripped scorn, beneath the hurt and despair and betrayal. “Justice?” he snarled, his brown eyes -- so close! So alive! -- crackling with fury. “What justice is there? You destroyed it. I found it, and you ripped it away.”

His cries rang round and round.

*****

It was days before anyone would talk to him. Varric was the first, because Varric would always be first. He found Fenris in the stables, not because he had any particular affinity for horses but because the big dumb animals with their unblinking stares were about the only creatures in Skyhold that didn’t look at him with loathing.

Varric coughed loudly, so as not to startle him, and when Fenris made no move to stop spearing hay and hurling it into the feeding nets, he came to stand beneath the loft and spoke as if merely changing the topic in the middle of an ongoing conversation.

“So I hear Blondie’s kind of a mess.”

Fenris scowled. Speared another forkful of hay. “Your tremendous powers of observation do you credit, Varric.”

“Do you really think alienating every last one of us is going to help you?”

“I’ve already done that, haven’t I? You’re just here to collect the story. You’ll probably write a book about it and earn a tidy little estate in Kirkwall. _My Time With the Idiot in the Arbor Wilds,_ you can call it.”

“You’ve always been bitter, Fenris, but the stupid is new.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to grow into it.” Fenris heard a scratching sound, and suspected Varric was scrubbing a hand across his chin in vexation. He did not look down.

“Have you even seen him? They’re keeping him sedated so he doesn’t try to -- you know. End it.”

“He made it quite clear he had no interest in seeing me before. I don’t think there are enough potions in Thedas to change that.”

“Oh for the love of the Maker, Fenris, are you really sour about this? After what you _did_ to him?”

Fenris leapt down from the loft, liquid-quick and lit with anger. “What I did to him?” he demanded, looming over the dwarf. “What I did to him was make sure all of you gave two fucks when your soldiers decided to blame him for something done by a person he no longer is!”

“But don’t you get it, Fenris? He _is_ that person again. Thanks to you.”

“But I didn’t know that would happen! Even Solas didn’t know that--”

“Solas has never left the guy alone. Blondie’s defenseless. Solas keeps going on and on, wanting to know what the voices are saying, all those dead elven priests -- Fenris, you have to help him.”

_”Me?_ Why?”

“Because you did this to him.”

“But he doesn’t even care!”

Varric looked up at him unblinking. “You’re wrong. He can’t stop caring. About anything. HE’s falling apart.”

“He’s free now. He’s himself. He doesn’t need me,” Fenris insisted, hating how sulky he sounded. Refusing to take it back, rephrase, recover. He turned to climb back into the hayloft.

“He’s never been less free,” Varric said quietly behind him. “And he hates himself. You two have that common ground to start from, anyway.”

Fenris turned to argue, but the dwarf was already walking away, the sun playing on the gold in his coat as he moved. _Like a damn jester,_ Fenris thought bleakly.

*****

Varric had been the first, but he was not the last. Dorian came next, popping his head through the floor of Fenris’ eyrie just as he had what seemed like ages ago, when he had cut Fenris’ hair around the scar tissue from the dragon’s breath.

“Still no patch on the roof?” he began, jovially enough, but it was an effort he quickly abandoned when Fenris, brooding in an arrow slit window that gazed out onto grim peaks, failed to respond. “You can’t hide up here forever,” the mage said instead, hauling himself the rest of the way up the ladder and settling himself on a barrel.

“I’m not hiding,” Fenris snapped.

“Oh come now, we all know who has the monopoly on sulking here, and it’s me. Don’t try to take away my crown.”

Fenris sighed. He preferred the company of the peaks, when it came down to it. “Why are you here, Dorian?”

Dorian waited long enough that Fenris looked to him for a reply. The man’s cheeks were hollow; dark circles hung under his eyes. “Because the world is ending,” the mage said grimly, “whether or not your fight gets resolved. We go to meet Corypheus tomorrow. Or have you managed to miss the fact that he and his pet monster have returned to Haven?”

Fenris blinked.

“Thought so,” Dorian sighed, without a trace of his usual vigor. “My point is, we would all die tomorrow, and it won’t have mattered whether Anders ran to you with open arms or spat in your face. But honestly, Fenris, what have you got left to lose?”

_I don’t want to be a weapon._

“If this is your idea of a pep talk, Dorian, I have to tell you that it’s not your calling.”

“I have many skills. Alas that repairing broken hearts isn’t one of them.”

“I’m not--”

Dorian raised a hand. “I don’t care what you are, Fenris. Except that you are my friend, and you did this thing, and if I were you, I would face it now. Before it’s too late.”

Fenris’ voice was sharper than he meant it to be. “Would you?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t even know--”

“How many ways do you think there are to break, Fenris?” the mage asked, voice soft. And sad. “Are they so different, in the end? Go talk to him.”

“He won’t talk to me.”

“Then talk _at_ him, until he listens. You will regret it forever if you don’t.”

Fenris scowled. “And if the world ends tomorrow?”

“Then you’ll regret it for as much ever as is left in the world.” Dorian removed himself from the barrel, then, moving toward the hole in the floor. 

Fenris took an involuntary step after him, though, and the mage paused. 

“Why _are_ you my friend, Dorian? After what I...did. After everything. Why?”

Dorian’s gray eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment, turning inward, seeing something Fenris could not. Then he blinked, and shrugged, the ghost of a smile crossing his face. Even if it didn’t touch his eyes.

“I know what it is to be the odd man out,” he said simply, and disappeared through the hole in the floor.

*****

Fenris waited until after dark. He didn’t know why, though he could conjure a whole host of excuses. By the time he emerged from his tower, everyone in Skyhold had retreated into themselves to cope with the panic that rose in them as they considered the coming day. Whether on their knees in front of a statue of Andraste, or furiously swabbing mugs in the tavern, or whispering fervent words to each other between bedrolls, the whole of Skyhold was preparing itself for a cataclysm. One more fretful elf among their number wasn’t even worth noticing, much less bothering with.

Fenris hadn’t thought to ask where Anders had been staying, though. Varric had said “they” were keeping him sedated -- the infirmity, then? Fenris took two steps in that direction and then stopped, listening. He thought he heard voices, but no. Nothing.

Before him lay the great hall of Skyhold. He was sure on any other occasion it would have been guarded, but not now -- everyone, it seemed, had been given the right to make their peace with whatever powers they believed in before the end.

The servants were still about their business, though: a cheery fire blazed in the hearth as it always did, spilling warm light that flickered across the bronze mosaics affixed to the opposite wall. Fenris approached them, his feet silent on the weathered stone floor, and traced with a finger the curves of backs, row after row of them, bowed under the weight of -- he squinted -- yokes?

“That one is called Freed Are Slaves.”

Fenris turned. Anders stood swathed in shadow, next to the massive stone plinth of the fireplace and so out of its light. His eyes picked up its flames, though -- reflected off the mosaics? -- and sparked in the darkness.

“Anders,” Fenris said. His tongue remembered the contortions it used to make, spitting the name out -- but the syllables were halting in his mouth, now. Hesitant. Afraid, if he would admit it -- which he would not.

Anders stepped forward and firelight lit him up like a candle. Cobalt robes now, golden hair, amber eyes. Eyes which looked past Fenris, toward the mosaic. “Freed are slaves. If they are freed, why are they still in chains? Why do they still carry yokes, as if lashed to a cart?”

Fenris glanced at the mage -- he _was_ a mage again now, wasn’t he? -- uncertainly, not trusting himself to say anything that wouldn’t make things worse. _As if, with the end of the world scheduled for tomorrow, it could get any worse._

Anders’ eyes darted to him as if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. “There’s no need to fear a _filthy_ mage. They dosed me up with the same stuff you brought to take me down. Fitting, I suppose.”

“Anders--”

“Interesting, isn’t it, that they bothered to keep track of the stuff after all that has happened? Think about it -- the entire town of Haven destroyed, next to no warning, and somehow your tiny vials of mage poison manage to make it out unscathed.”

“I had nothing to do with that!” Fenris blurted, and Anders’ eyes narrowed.

“Tell me, Fenris. Why do you think that _matters?”_

Fenris opened his mouth, then closed it.

Anders continued as though he’d been prompted to do so. “I didn’t do it, Anders. I didn’t know, Anders. What am I supposed to do with that information?” His voice had dipped so low in mockery -- blades heating on the flames -- and now it rose, sparks flying. “Did you expect forgiveness? Redemption? Now that you’ve imprisoned a thousand damned elves in my head, and me along with them, do you expect me to _thank_ you?”

“I--no.”

“Then what? What did you think would happen? That I’d fall to my knees in adoration of you? That I’d--” his face contorted, and he grabbed suddenly at Fenris’ crotch, at which the elf jumped back a pace. “Ah, see? You remember that night in Haven. Did you congratulate yourself on how noble you were, refusing a mere _Tranquil?”_

“No, Anders, I--”

Anders made another grab, and again Fenris jerked away. “Did you hope I’d do it again? Oh, _Fenris,”_ he crooned in a cutting falsetto, “now that I’m me again, take me! Take me!”

“Stop, Anders! Just stop!”

The mage’s eyes smoldered as he advanced, the firelight flinging unpredictable planes and angles of shadow across his face. “Or you’ll what, Fenris? Stop or you’ll do what? Kill me? You won’t make me Tranquil again, because that makes you feel too _guilty,_ and we can’t have that. No, you need me around so I can feel guilty for you, right?” His voice began to shake. “Well, that’s all well and good for you, but not me, friend. I’ve been guilty. I found my punishment and took it, but you took it back. So now I -- I’m free, you’ll say, but this is--” He slammed his eyes shut then, muttering furiously to people Fenris could neither see nor hear. _”Go away!”_ His amber eyes brimming with tears now reopened, focusing on Fenris like a hawk pouncing on its prey. _”This is anything but freedom, Fenris._ ” He reached out, slowly, and picked up Fenris’ hand, the lyrium tattoos glittering in the firelight as he raised them to his lips. “End it, Fenris,” he whispered. “End it, _please._ I know you can, even with just your bare hands. End it, and take back your guilt. Because I am not free of it.”

Fenris’ legs felt rooted to the floor. He wanted to rip his hand out of Anders’ grasp and run, as fast and as far as his feet would take him. Surely death at Corypheus’ own hands would be preferable to this? And yet he stood affixed to the spot, unable to raise his voice in protest, or control his hand as the flickering of the tattoos began to glow, faster and faster, and he began to reach…

“Anders,” came a voice from above. “That’s enough.”

Anders scowled up, past the top of Fenris’ head, to where Solas stood leaning on the upper balcony, glaring right back down at the both of them. 

“You aren’t my keeper,” Anders snarled. 

“You are unwell. And if you are hearing the...the Well, your medicine is wearing off. Come take another dose.”

Anders fixed Fenris with a withering stare. _”Medicine,_ they call it now. You see? _Freed are slaves,_ indeed.”

“Don’t flatter yourself by pretending to understand matters of which you know nothing,” Solas snapped from above -- voice harsher, a distant part of Fenris noted mechanically, than he would have expected.

“So now I’m a child too, in addition to being a slave? How lovely.” Anders’ eyes flashed venom. “This is what you brought me back to, Fenris. Remind me to thank you when I can hear you again over the chorus of dead elves in my head.” 

Fenris blinked, hard. A moment ago this man had been asking him to kill him. And through some sort of magical manipulation Fenris still didn’t understand, he had been about to do it. Now the mage was contenting himself with barbed remarks?”

Anders read the confusion on his face, and what looked for a moment like it might be a hiccup or a sneeze turned into a laugh. A horrid, creaking, quaking laugh that echoed round the empty hall and leapt back at them like a demon from the shadows. “Your...your face!” Anders wheezed between pained gales of cackling. “It’s...priceless!”

Fenris only stared. Frozen, this time, not by any spell or incantation, but by the weight of the realization that when Varric said Anders was falling apart, he meant it. 

“Anders, here.” Solas had circled back through the tower and come down, carrying a vial with him.

“What, no darts this time? You’re sure you don’t want to have Fenris stab me with one, for old time’s sake?”

“Do you want the voices to cease, or not?”

Still seized by the occasional stifled giggle, Anders glared balefully back and forth between Solas and Fenris before taking the vial roughly from Solas’ grasp and downing it in one gulp. “Enjoy the peace you can buy in me while you can,” Anders growled. “You’ll run out eventually.”

“Perhaps your emotions will have stabilized by then,” Solas replied evenly.

“Or perhaps it won’t matter because we’ll all be baked to crispy bits by a dragon tomorrow. Which reminds me, if the world is ending, I should probably get some sleep for it. Fenris,” he purred, eyes narrowing like a cat’s, “are you sure you don’t want to--”

“Anders!” Solas barked.

“Fine. Enjoy your evening, boys. You deserve each other.” With that he turned on his heel and stomped out, robes trailing behind him, glittering into the shadows.

Silence, save the crackling of the fire. At the far end of the hall a servant poked her head in, caught sight of the two elves, then backed hurriedly away. 

“He was worse, before,” Solas said after a minute. 

“He’s…” _Crazy. Furious. Justifiably so._ Fenris could say none of these things aloud, so he said instead, “why did you tell the elves at the temple that you’d told me to follow you?”

Solas paused the merest fraction of a beat before picking up the thread of the conversation as though they had been spinning it for some time. “Because I suspected Morrigan would have you do it. They would have killed you, had they not been warned.”

“But you didn’t _know.”_

“It was a reasonable guess.”

“If you knew I was there, then why…” Fenris scrubbed a hand through his hair, tufting it up into white spikes he didn’t notice. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

Solas kept his face as still as a pond. “You expected me to?”

“If you know that -- that that’s what would happen--”

“I suspected Morrigan would have you follow us. I had no idea what you were planning on doing to the Well until you had already done it.”

Fenris hissed angrily. “I didn’t plan on--”

“I didn’t know how the well worked, until it was already too late.”

“But you knew what it _was.”_

It was Solas’ turn to look angry now: his face darkened like a summer sea beset by thunderstorms, and he sprang into motion, prowling back and forth at a furious pace. “Exactly how much do you think I can keep track of at any given time, Fenris? How many rules have been broken by this Inquisition -- of nature, of magic, of time itself? How many personalities with conflicting motives, and the means to pursue them, are we trying to manage here? And you expect me to predict that you would steal thousands of years of elven culture and imprison it the broken vessel of a man who--”

“He’s not broken!”

Solas spun on his heel. _”Look_ at him, Fenris! What about that is not broken to you?”

“I--”

_”What have you not broken?”_

Fenris felt his face contorting, the tattoos on his neck and arms and chest flaring to life, and before he could stop himself he had phased across the room, breath a storm suspended in his throat, stopping just short of that unbridgeable gulf that was the space Solas took up in that shadow-realm. He came back fully into his body mere inches from the other elf, tilting his head up in order to meet him glare for glare when he whispered. “This. Was not. My fault.”

Solas scoffed right into his face. “It most certainly is. I took you for a fool, Fenris, but not a blind one.”

“If you knew half as much as you act like you do, you’d have fixed this by now!”

Fenris had only said it out of fury and the desperation he felt creeping in the pit of his stomach, turning it to ice with the knowledge that Solas was probably right. He certainly hadn’t put a lot of thought into the words he’d let fly so suddenly -- a last-ditch effort, he thought, if ever there was one -- which was why his eyes widened as something shifted in Solas’ face. Something glimpse only for a moment, dark and uncoiling snake-like across the man’s features, before he buried it again beneath a mask of calm.

“If I had known how, I would have.”

His words fell crisply and cleanly into the space between them -- stones plunking into a pond -- and yet Fenris felt the weight of some unseen force driving the words down, down into the belly of the earth. What had writhed across Solas’ face a moment ago? Pain, yes, but sorrow, too? Regret? Guilt?

“It is late,” Solas said, again in that calm, sterile voice. “You should sleep.” He withdrew, one step back and then another, and then he was gone.

“Nothing,” Fenris whispered into the silence and the flames, the fear and the fervent prayers that gripped Skyhold that night. Answering a question that had been allowed to go unanswered. A kindness he did not think he deserved. “There is nothing I have not broken.”

*****

This time, Fenris knew he was dreaming from the beginning. Instead of Seheron’s sandy shores or the dark shadows of Denarius’ Kirkwall manor, open air fell away before and below him, cut through by waterfalls that cascaded into the abyss from incongruously floating islands that hung suspended in the air, some large and some small, as far as the eye could see. Pink, yellow, ochre: an eternal twilight seemed perpetually about to descend, though Fenris could find no sun from which to take his bearings or the time.

_”You shouldn’t be here.”_

Fenris knew the mage had to be here somewhere, but still he jumped when he heard the voice, what seemed mere inches from his ear. He whirled, and Solas stood there but he looked...different. Intricate plates of overlapping gold armor hugged his legs, and instead of the careworn green tunic he wore around Skyhold, a magnificent furry white mantel nearly swallowed up one of his shoulders. Beneath it, more armor glittered, catching the ghost sun’s light from its invisible source and toying with it along strange lines and curves.

It took Fenris only a moment to recover from the disjuncture between the Solas he knew and this one, armor or no. “What do you want, Solas? You brought me here.”

Over the gleaming gold hauberk, the elf’s eyes narrowed. “I did no such thing. I would never bring you here.”

“Why not?” Fenris gazed around at the floating islands, the shimmering columns of water pouring to nowhere, and bristled. “You’ve done it before. Plucked me from whatever nightmares I’ve dreamed up for myself and dumped me here instead. In your precious, precious Fade.” He hissed a sigh. “What makes this any different?”

Solas clasped his hands behind his back. He glimmered as he moved, and an unfelt wind ruffled the fur mantle under his ear. 

“Do you take such pleasure in blaming others for your predicaments that you cannot imagine having brought any of this about on your own?”

Fenris felt his face grow hot. “I didn’t mean that and you know it, mage. I only meant the Fade.”

“Mage, is it? Are we back to that again? Does secreting people away behind labels you revile really make it easier to harm them?”

_”Harm_ them?” Fenris spluttered. “What are you talking about? _You_ are in absolute control in this place, you always are! And I--”

Solas stood stiffly, strung tight as a bow, and turned away so suddenly Fenris feared an external attack, and stopped short. But there was only light, space, emptiness, and a silence that stretches so long Fenris wondered if he had missed something.

“I...wanted you to do better. Where I had done worse. To succeed where I had failed.” A tremor in his voice, or just that strange wind playing tricks?

“So you brought me _here?”_

Solas shook his head, a sharp, dismissive snap of a gesture. “No. Not here. I never wanted you to see this.”

Fenris looked around. “What _is_ this?”

Solas did not turn, did not even move, and so when he spoke, Fenris could barely make it out.

“This is what I did.”

Fenris snorted. “So you admit it then.”

“Not that.” Solas turned from the cavorting islands, the airborne rivers ceaselessly falling. “This...this was the kingdom of the elves, the greatest storehouse of their knowledge. And I destroyed it.” Muscles flicked along his jaw, tightening. “Like I destroyed everything else.”

“Oh, sure.” Fenris rolled his eyes, pleased to see Solas flinch when he did so. “As if one man could--”

_”I am no mere man!”_ Solas howled. And it _was_ a howl -- not a shout or a below. The bald elf was in pain. He grabbed Fenris’ hand, holding fast when the latter resisted. “Look!” he rasped, yanking hard on Fenris’ arm, and they began to rise, the rocky ground of the floating island they’d been standing on falling away beneath them. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the stump of rock retreated...and more swung into view.

Towers, spires, delicate gossamer bridges spun like spider webs arcing halfway across the mathematics of their curves before ending in a jagged precipice. Buildings, multicolored glass still glittering in their windows, clustered around empty squares and along empty streets, all of which ended abruptly before reaching whatever destination they had been built to strive toward. Coliseums, parks, temples: shards of an entire civilization whipped past them as they surged ahead, always fractured, splintered, peppered with debris.

Abruptly Solas released his iron grip on Fenris’ hand, and smooth stone tiles pockmarked with pages rose up to meet the tattooed elf as he fell.

“Look,” Solas demanded, striding straight past Fenris without missing a beat. _”Look,_ Fenris!

Jagged bookshelves leaning precariously against each other groaned as books heaved open, sighing torrents of pages out into the air in a whirlwind that stretched taller and taller, even as Fenris watched. Staggering to his feet, he reached out and snatched a page from the air, squinting at the words.

“You can’t even read it, can you!” cried Solas, from the center of the vortex, eyes fixed on Fenris, hands upraised, face upturned. “You can’t even read what happened to your own people! You don’t even know yourselves!”

Fenris watched for a moment longer, then charged forward, straight through the whirlwind, swatting away pages left and right. “Stop!” he bellowed, over the thundering flutter of knowledge, of words that were foreign to him. _”Kaffas,_ Solas, stop this! What is the point?”

He had reached the center, pages still plastered to his shoulders, billowing around his feet, and he grabbed Solas’ golden scaled arms and yanked them down. Solas lowered his face, then, and Fenris saw that his eyes shimmered.

“I wanted you to understand, Solas said hoarsely, as around them pages drifted down like solemn snowflakes. “I wanted you to succeed where I had failed. I wanted you to see you overcome it, the way I...could not.”

“How? Solas, even if you did this--”

“I did.”

Fenris huffed his disbelief, but left it at that. “Even so, what does it have to do with me? With Anders?”

Solas -- elven apostate, navigator to Skyhold, mender of the unmendable -- looked at him for a long moment, before gently removing his arms from where Fenris held them. “You loved him,” the mage said simply.

Fenris looked from the suddenly-small self to the toothy, broken bookcases to the pages raining down from tomes that would never be read and beyond, to the shattered islands floating in a sunless sunset void. “You did this...if you did it...out of love?”

“Yes.”

“Of who?”

Solas caught a passing page, illustrated: on it, rows of shadowed figures, indistinguishable from another, bent under the gaze of a glittering few who loomed over them. “Of a people treated wrongly.”

“Did it work?”

Solas took Fenris’ arm, turning it over so the tattoos glowed plainly along his skin. “What would you say, Little Wolf?”

Frowning, Fenris tried to pull away, but Solas held on, tracing the lyrium tattoo with his free hand. “Do you understand the degree to which they mocked you, when they did this to you?”

Fenris glared. “I’m familiar with the debasements of slavery, in case you’ve forgotten.”  
“No, I don’t doubt even your master understood what he was doing.” Solas’ voice calmed; grew pedagogical. More like himself. “All he likely thought to do was pattern your markings after the Dalish, in a kind of aesthetic echo of the freedom you didn’t have. But these markings never had anything to do with freedom.”

“The Dalish say that--”

“The Dalish have forgotten more than they ever knew, and misremembered the rest,” Solas snapped. “These tattoos, the _vallaslin_ they so cherish -- they were slave markings. Stamped by those in power upon the faces of people they presumed to treat as property, so everyone would know who did the owning.”

Fenris found his eyes drawn to his hands, to the white lines curling there. “Doesn’t it have to with elven gods?”

Solas’ laugh rang sharp and bitter in the empty air. “There are no elven gods. Only fools mad with power.”

“How can you know that?”

Solas’ eyes were dark as forests, and as deep. “Because I locked them up. I am Fen’Harel, Little Wolf.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You did not choose it, did you? I did not choose Fen’Harel, either. I was Solas first. But I came to own it. You have done the same.”

“We’re nothing alike, you and I.”

Solas cocked his head, ruffling the fur by his neck. “Aren’t we? You destroyed your world, and I destroyed mine. Mine was perhaps somewhat larger, but you could have loved more, made room for it, given enough time.”

“Why are you telling me this? Even if I believed you -- why?”

Solas still had not dropped Fenris’ hand. “Because you are out of time.” He stepped closer, and the furry ruff bristled beneath Fenris’ chin. “I was a fool, Fenris. I slept a thousand years and woke to a world still broken in new ways and not even aware of it. I crafted a key that could undo the damage I’d done but--“ Here he faltered. “It fell into the wrong hands. And I allowed myself to imagine, to entertain that most childish of notions -- that through someone else, through someone else’s eyes and lips and the words those lips spoke, I might find release.” He looked down. “Release, if not and never redemption.”

_There was a choice to make, and I made it._

_You chose wrong._

_It wouldn’t be the first time._

Fenris’ head spun. All the times Solas had told him to live. Had kept him alive. Had kept him alive at -- he thought of Hawke -- at the price of other lives lost. 

_Your youth -- would you have unwritten it, if you could?_

_I only ever made it difficult to find your anger._

_Forgive me._

“Anders,” Fenris croaked. “How did you think it would end with Anders? How would that redeem you?”

“I was not certain. The concept of Tranquility was new to me when I awoke, and I had not studied it fully. I thought perhaps there might be a way. Somehow.”

“But not the way I found?”

Solas’ lips pursed into a thin line. “No, not that.”

“But all those times you -- when we --”

Solas raised Fenris’ wrist to his lips, and looked up, addressing him so Fenris felt the other man’s breath on his skin. “When I did this?”

“Y-yes. That.” Fenris swallowed. “What was the point?”

Solas lowered Fenris’ hand and let it go. His eyes looked to somewhere beyond seeing for a moment, and then refocused on Fenris. “A thousand ages could start and end and start again, and loneliness would still be known to men. Is it so foreign to you?”

Fenris stared. 

“At times, I wanted to be you. Other times, I wanted to fix you -- this one part of this one world, I thought I could fix. I was, however, mistaken.”

Fenris took a shaky breath. “Most of this is my fault. If I hadn’t fought for Anders to be made Tranquil--”

“No. Not that. Again, you misunderstand,” Solas said, looking him directly in the eyes now. “My mistake was in bringing you to the Fade.”

“You said you didn’t bring me this time.”

“And so I did not. Yet here you are. You found me in my moment of weakness, I suspect through some affinity your tattoos have with the Fade after repeated exposure. And now I have divulged my secrets to you, too many of them. We are, both of us, out of time.”

Fenris took one step back, and then another. _Wake up wake up wake up._ “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, to keep Solas talking. To distract him.

“So you will know that what I do, I do with great sorrow. And I do it for your freedom -- the kind you were never able to have.” He took two long steps forward then, bridging the gap between them easily, and grabbed Fenris’ tattooed face between his hands, a spell already starting to glow there.

Fenris began to scream.

“I am sorry,” Solas whispered. “I have taken everything from everyone. Why should you be any different?”

_Wake up!_ Fenris howled at himself, inside or outside his head, he did not know or care, as pain the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in decades coursed over and _into_ his skin. Digging, probing, peeling. 

But he did not wake.

TWO YEARS LATER

First, there was light.

A thin spear of it, a jolt of warmth on his face that moved inexorably slowly, across his skin. He did not know when he became aware of the light, or over how many periods of consciousness -- one? one hundred? -- he put together the warmth on the skin with the need his eyelids felt to squint shut. _Light._ That was what such a thing was called. The very realization exhausted him, and consciousness fled like a kit in a storm: there and then gone. Ripped away.

Next, there was sound. A harsh, grating sound, over and over, but from different angles. High, low? What was space? Even as his ears reminded him of space and its many orientations, he conjured up a name for the sound. _Seagulls._

Seheron, then. Was it Seheron? In the presence of so many words and their implications -- _seagulls, Seheron, the sea and standing at its edge, two figures_ \-- consciousness threatened to flee again. But he clung fast to it, desperately angry, suddenly, at the idea of more nothingness. _No. No more._ He was tired of nothing. He was _tired._ But he was something, and he refused to be an absence of anything any longer.

He tried to thrash, to leap to his feet, but he was so, so weak. The most he managed to do was crack open his eyes, when then necessitated slamming them shut again against the dazzle of light, seen light, and color and texture and _substance…_

He tried again. Only one eye, this time. Eventually the torrent of sensation resolved to long, aged gray wood patterning, shot through with lances of a hazy, glowing gray. He squinted, trying to make sense of the scale, unable even to rotate his head to get a better look. Even the effort of keeping his eyes open and his brain engaged this long was exhausting. Sleep called to him; it beckoned to him with open arms, but he balked at it. No rest, no return to nothingness, not until--

The long, high screech of a poorly-oiled hinge shattered his concentration, and more sounds scurried in on the heels of the screen: rustling, the slap of wet objects hitting a hard surface. The clumping of feet, their pause, and the clatter of something dropped. The sudden suck of air between parched lips.

“Maker’s breath, you’re awake?”

Gray patterning -- aha! a roof? -- and shafts of hazy light vanished suddenly behind a looming face, on which he had trouble focusing. His ability to shift from long-distance views to objects close by was slow to respond, as though rusty. He struggled to blink -- or rather, to open his eyes again after closing them -- and found to his relief and shock that he could. He blinked rapidly several times before the shape above him clarified into a face. An unfamiliar face, careworn behind a scraggly beard, the rest of it chapped with windburn. The face hung there for a moment, then disappeared. He tried to call out, to call the face back, but realized to his horror that this was too much for him. Then he felt hands on him and a flash of light, and all went black.

*****

“Third time’s the charm,” he thought as his eyes flew open this time. He was stronger now, more awake, and he could even twitch his head from side to side in an effort to locate the owner of the face again. An effort which was unnecessary. The face loomed into his view, wreathed in shadow now -- the cracks between the wooden slats gave way now only to black -- and hung there for a long while, so long that it began to seem like a dream.

“Everyone said you weren’t going to wake up, you know.”

Fenris’ eyes widened; he tried to form a name, but he choked on it. The voice continued.

_“Uthenara,_ he called it. I thought it sounded fishy at the time, you suddenly being able to do this thing no one had done for a thousand years. But no one could spare the time to question him any more on it, and then after…well, you know.” A pause. “Or I guess you don’t. He’s gone, though, and any knowledge of this _uthenara_ along with him. 

“A-A-A…” Fenris gurgled, trying to get words out. To get _the_ word out. 

“Hauling you up here was no easy task, let me tell you. The Chargers offered to help, but I wasn’t too keen on everyone knowing where I was. What with my being so terribly popular and all.”

Fenris tried a different word. “Wh-wh--”

“Water?”

_”No! Why!”_

Anders twirled the ragged tip of his beard between thumb and forefinger, staring hard, past Fenris to an undefinable horizon. “Why what? Why are you alive? Apparently _uthenara_ does everything _but_ kill you. Why are we out here in the ass end of nowhere? I told you, I’m a fairly popular man, bound to attract the wrong sort of attention.”

Fenris stared at that grizzled beard, an echo of how Anders had worn it on the run -- and he struggled to make sense. “Why you here?” he blurted, with what felt like the effort that would be required to move mountains. 

Anders regarded him for a long moment, his face unreadable.

“Why?” Fenris repeated.

“Do you have any idea how many times I have asked myself that question?” 

The shadow withdraw, and Fenris heard crackling -- a fire being stirred. From that unbridgeable distance, Anders spoke.

“No one knew what to do with you. The Inquisition didn’t want you -- not after what you’d done to me. The elves didn’t want you, either, once they’d all had a look at you and confirmed without a doubt that they knew no more of _uthenara_ now than they did before. I think Leliana even contacted a Circle, wondering if a curious mage might take you for study.”

Fenris made a strangled sound.

“I know. Not her brightest idea. So you remained, tucked away in a corner of Skyhold, sleeping the months and then the years away.”

Fenris spluttered.

“Two years,” Anders said, as though he’d received a perfectly intelligible question. “You’ve been out two years, and the Inquisitor is even now marching south to a summons from the Divine. Probably to decide the future of their little movement. As soon as I heard that, though, I packed up to come out here. Whatever they decide, upheaval tends not to go well for me. Which, yes, brings us back to you.” 

Anders grew silent, and Fenris thought it was because he was unsure of what to say, until he heard the clink of dishware. “Can you eat?” The shadow hovered back into view and observed him for a minute. “No, I suppose not,” he said, in response to Fenris’ silence, and there came the clink of dishware again, as he settled himself with his meal. “Do you remember feeding me, when I was Tranquil?” he asked, voice quiet all of a sudden, very different from the casual indifference of the moment before.

Fenris did not think he was up to nodding yet. “Yes,” he croaked.

“At the time I thought…” Anders paused, staring down at his hands, or the bowl in his hands. Fenris could not see. “Well, at the time I _thought_ nothing, I only...observed, like a reflection in a puddle. It looked to me, in the cocoon of my objectivity, like you were someone else entirely than the man my memories told me you had been.” He stopped to take a bit of whatever it was he was eating. “I could arrange the pieces of what had happened in my mind, like a blacksmith’s puzzle, but the shape at the end was never you. This man trying to feed me past a bandage that swallowed up half my face -- he was a stranger.” Here he paused, and there was no clink of crockery this time. Only the silence of the construction of careful sentences. “Rationality was the only faculty left to me, and I couldn’t reason you out. Then when they came in -- when I came back…” Fenris heard the grimace in the words. “All these new voices in my head, emotions too, having not had any in so long. It was like a flood. Did you know that Pharamond, the mage Cole knew about -- he was made Tranquil again? He begged for it, they said.”

Fenris held very still and fought to remain conscious. Fatigue gnawed at him.

“I needed a goal. I would not be a weapon again. No matter what they said. I...would not.” Anders bent forward, leaning closer, and the closeness brought a waft of -- was it stew, then? fish stew? -- up Fenris’ nose. His stomach growled violently, impossible not to notice in the quiet of the room.

“You asked me why,” Anders said, clinking his spoon against the side of the bowl. “I heal people. That’s what I do. I am no instrument of Justice, not anymore -- there was no room for him in there. Not with all the others.” He held a spoon brimming with liquid to Fenris’ lips, and the elf felt his stomach writhe joyously in anticipation of sustenance. “No one else needed me, and….no one else cared what happened to you. You who aren’t who you were, who don’t make sense, and who have lost...much, now. Drink.”

Fenris sipped, and the thin broth was the most wonderful thing he had ever tasted. It wasn’t until they reached the bottom of the bowl that he realized his eyes were wet.

“I’ve been casting healing spells on you for months. Normally I wouldn’t need to -- the elves in my head can convey that much to me -- but whatever happened to you made it last longer than it should have.” He held up a hand, and a faint puff of a fireball appeared there, flickering. “Can you sense anything? Any magic?”

Fenris frowned. Of course he could, he could always--

But he could not. Not a whisper. His eyes widened.

“I thought so,” Anders said, letting the fireball wink out. “Look.” He rose and disappeared for a moment, and came back with a dented shield. He held it close, and Fenris didn’t see what the point was until he met his own eyes, and looked down to his barren chin.

The lyrium tattoos were gone.

With a surge of desperation Fenris clamped his mouth shut and tried to phase. Even just an inch to the right. Nothing. Up, down, it did not matter -- he reached, but there was nothing there. 

“He took them,” he hissed. “He said he’d...taken everything. He took them.”

“Who?”

Fenris’ eyes clawed their way to Anders’ face, frightened and hating himself for it, but frightened all the same. 

“Solas. Where is he? I’ll...kill him.”

“Solas is gone.” Anders watched him for a reaction, but Fenris held still. “He disappeared right after the fight with Corypheus. Even Leliana can’t find him, so far as I knew when I left.”

“Corypheus is dead? But Solas…” Fenris swallowed on images of floating islands and the pages of lost histories raining down, unread and unreadable. “He’s...he’s not...what he seems.”

“I expect not.” Anders cocked his head curiously. “How did he take your tattoos, though? I thought they were permanent. 

Fenris’ eyes started to water. “They were.”

“Then how--”

“In the Fade.” Tears were sparking at the corners of his eyes now, tickling his skin -- his unmarked, powerless skin -- as they trailed down his face, toward his ears. “He -- you don’t understand, he -- he --” He started to cry.

“Sleep,” Anders said. He did not whisper it; he was not gentle. He was earnest. “Sleep.”

Fenris was barely conscious when he heard the mage say, almost as if to himself, “That’s why.”

*****

Day by day, Fenris grew stronger. With the ability to eat more and more food came a much swifter recovery, and soon he was able to hobble around the shack for small bursts at a time, before collapsing back into uneasy slumber. He became aware of an irrational fear, in himself, of sleep: he worried that each time he closed his eyes he might wake up years later. But his sleep remained regular, and he required less and less of it over the next few days. When Anders was in the room, they exchanged careful observations about the weather (rain) or the food (fish). They treated each other as the strangers they felt themselves to be.

It wasn’t until the eighth day, when Anders had been gone for hours and Fenris had begun to worry, that he ventured out of the shack. Haltingly, with agonizing stops for breath and to give his muscles a chance to lean on the table, the wall, the doorway -- Fenris made his way out into a rare patch of Storm Coast sunshine, amid seagulls cartwheeling on a stiff salt breeze. He picked his way down the only path he saw, sprinkling it with curses through clenched teeth, and was almost out of breath when he rounded a boulder and saw Anders, head bowed, kneeling over a shield used as a basin in the shallows of a stream where it fed into the sea.

“Can I ask you a question?” Anders spoke into his reflection.

Fenris grimaced. Anders had heard him approaching. Of course he had -- Fenris’ breath wheezed in his throat and he was unsteady on his feet, knocking pebbles to the side and crunching bits of driftwood underfoot. This was the most exertion by far that he’d had since waking, and he sounded like it.

“Yes,” he gasped, coming alongside the mage and barely managing to make his descent to the water’s edge look voluntary. Beneath him, his legs shook. He rubbed his eyes with his unmarked hands.

“Were you together?”

Fenris froze, fingers at his temple, concealing his face on that side from the mage leaning over his basin with his blade. “Why do you ask?” he said carefully.

Anders shrugged and continued shaving. He had never taken his eyes off the bowl before him. “Something in the way he asked about you that morning. It was him who searched you out, who let everyone know how ill you were. That you couldn’t wake up but that you were dying even so. He was frantic.” One careful stroke along his chin, and the skin beneath was bare to the sky for the first time in who knew how long. “Then they all went off to fight Corypheus and no one ever saw him again.”

Fenris watched the mage take another stripe down his chin before answering. “He was probably just covering his tracks. Pretending he didn’t know what was going on.”

“If you say so.”

“He was the one who did this to me!”

Anders paused then and looked over. “Did he mean to?”

Fenris snorted and turned away, out to the sea. Another storm was already on its way in: the great dark clouds were whipping themselves up into frothy peaks that would return to the Storm Coast, as they always did. He thought of a different sea, glittering and perpetually sunset, accompanied by the sounds of birds he hadn’t heard -- really heard -- in many years.

“He said he wanted to be me,” Fenris murmured. “Sometimes. Other times, he said he wanted to fix for me what he couldn’t for him. I think…” He looked down at his bare arms, pale after so long without sun, and absent of any trace of the lyrium that had been burned into him by his one-time master. “I don’t know what I think,” he said at last.

“Maybe he didn’t either,” Anders murmured back, setting his blade down and eyeing the coming clouds. Seemingly on impulse, he rose, and held out a hand. “Come on. It’s going to rain soon. The storms here are atrocious.”

Fenris winced at the thought of any upward climb, let alone the one he had to make. “Give me a minute.”

“Let me heal you. You’re exhausted. You’ll never make it back before it opens up.”

Fenris opened his mouth to protest. Beneath him, his legs ached, and in his lungs, his breath came in short, shallow gasps. Before him stretched the sea -- and not the scrap of memory resurrected in dreams of a perfect world, one which he could have fixed. A storm-tossed sea about to become more so, that smelled of salt and fish and the pine trees that ran almost to its shore.

“All right then,” he sighed, reaching up to grasp Anders’ hand. There was a flare of blue light whose magic he could no longer sense -- he felt only its effects, as it traveled down his arm and through his body, revivifying muscles still suffering atrophy from years of disuse. After a moment, Anders tugged him to his feet, and Fenris let him. He twitched a smile in gratitude, sheepishly, and Anders didn’t comment on his weakness, or make a quip about mages. Instead he turned toward the storm, following Fenris’ gaze. Any creature watching from the shadows of the forest would have seen two figures, small against the storm, but watching it. Standing against it, for whatever they were worth.

Not that there was any creature watching.


End file.
